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RELIGIOUS DUTY. 



BY 



FRANCES POWER COBBE. 




LONDON : 

TRtTBNER & CO., 60, PATERNOSTER ROW. 

1864. 



[The iight of Translation is reserved.] 



it* 



LONDON : 

WILLIAM STEVENS, PEINTEB, 37, BELL YABD, 
TEMPLE BAB. 



CONTENTS, 



CHAPTEE I. 

PAGE 

The Canon of Eeligious Duty 1 



CHAPTEE II. 

Eeligious Offences. 



Sect. I. Blasphemy . . . . .17 

„ II. Apostacy ...... 20 

„ III. Hypocrisy . . . . .31 

IV. Perjury ...... 40 

„ V. Sacrilege . . . . . .43 

„ VI. Persecution 47 

„ VII. Atheism . . . . . .55 

„ VIII. Pantheism 65 

„ IX. Polytheism 66 

X. Idolatry 67 

„ XI. Demonolatry 79 



CHAPTER III. 
Eeligious Faults. 
Sect. I. Thanklessness . . . , . .84 
,, II. Irreverence 86 



viii 



CONTENTS. 



Sect. III. Prayerlessness . 

„ IV. Impenitence 
„ V. Scepticism 

„ VI. Worldliness 

CHAPTER IV. 
Beligiotjs Obligations. 



Sect. • I. Thanksgiving . . . . .109 

II. Adoration 142 

III. Prayer . . . . . . .164 

„ IV. Eepentance . . . . .231 

V. Faith 282 

VI. Self-consecration . . . .310 



. 96 
. 98 
. 104 



CHAPTER L 



RELIGIOUS DUTY. 

It is not the concern of the moralist, but of the psycho- 
logist, to investigate the fundamental principle of the 
Religious Sentiment in the human soul. That 'senti- 
ment may be, in its germ (as Schleiermacher has 
affirmed), a mere " sense of dependence." More ac- 
curately defined (as by Sclienkel), it may be " a sense 
of dependence ethically induced."* In its perfect form 
it would seem to be best described as " the sense of abso- 

* "A mere feeling of dependence still falls short of any moral 
element, which is never wholly absent from religion. Hence Schleier- 
macher's view decidedly needs correction on the ethical side. ISTot till 
it is ethically induced — not, that is to say, till it arises from a function 
of the conscience — does the feeling of dependence properly pass into 
religion. And if we may say that there is no religion void of the 
element of dependence, we must, on equal grounds, affirm that there 
are (absolute) feelings of dependence which do not fall within the pro- 
vince of religion." — Article " Abhangigkeitsgefiihl, " by Dr. Sclienkel, 
in the Real Encyclopadie fiir protestantische Theologie uiid Kirche, 
quoted in the Westminster Review, 

The doctrine of Schleiermacher has been ably attacked by Mansell, 
Limits of Religious Thought, Lecture iv. 

B 



2 



RELIGIOUS DUTY. 



lute dependence united with the sense of absolute moral 
allegiance" tlie Being on whom we depend being recog- 
nised as possessing the Bight to claim, as well as the 
Power to enforce, our absolute obedience. 

In whatever depths of our nature the religious senti- 
ment may find its source, it is, however, sufficiently 
patent that the duty which it entails upon us is a real 
and actual one, not lying hidden among the obscure and 
vague feelings of the heart, but rising to the surface of 
speech and action, and demanding even the highest 
place among our recognised affections. Through that 
sentiment we have received intimation of, and have 
entered into relation with, a Being who, ivhen so recog- 
nised, acquires in the nature of things a whole series of 
claims upon us. Had we no such sentiment, our under- 
standings might possibly have worked out inductively 
the " hypothesis of a God," though it is far more pro- 
bable they would have utterly failed to do so. But the 
" Great First Cause/' even if thus brought within the 
field of our philosophy, and recognised further to be 
necessarily a perfect moral Being, would have remained 
for ever on the outside of our consciousness and beyond 
the sphere of human duty, had He not given to our 
souls an organ to perceive Him, a sentiment which 
can love our unseen Father. Possessed of this religious 
Sentiment, our religious Duty follows of necessity ; nay, 
it follows that all duty acquires a religious obligation, 
md man becomes, before all other characteristics, a 
religious being. 



RELIGIOUS DUTY. 3 

In the first place, religion is ethically incumbent on 
all moral agents, because the absolute holiness of God 
constitutes Him their moral King and Master. This 
truth, in a certain vague manner, is so commonly recog- 
nised that there seems almost a degree of irreverence in 
attempting to show the grounds of that Divine authority 
which in our ordinary consciousness precedes any abstract 
morality, and is itself the sanction of all right. Never- 
theless, for religion's own sake it is most needful that 
we apprehend truly its real basis, whereon alone we 
may build such a faith as shall include all duty and all 
love, and shall exclude alike all idolatrous worship of 
the imperfect, and all demonolatrous dread of evil power 
or evil wisdom. God Himself, in making us rational 
creatures, has implicitly rested his title to our allegiance 
on His own moral perfection, for to such perfection alone 
is it lawful for such creatures to bow. He has given us 
natures which can regard with no veneration even Om- 
nipotence itself, if represented as united with the moral 
attributes of a fiend. We must know that Grod Himself 
is righteous before those hearts which he has made can 
adore Him. He deigns to receive no servile homage. 
Further, a religion which shall be identified with sound 
morality must recognise distinctly, not only that God is 
good, and so deserving our love and reverence, but that 
He is infinitely good, and so entitled to our absolute 
fealty and obedience. We must not regard Him (as a 
finite being, however virtuous, must be regarded) as a 
fellow-subject of the necessary law. He resumes the 

b 2 



4 



RELIGIOUS DUTY. 



whole of it in His own absolute holiness, and therefore 
rules us as King. His will is co-ordinate with, all right ; 
He is the impersonation thereof, Himself the eternal 
Living Law. No ethical limits exist to His jurisdiction 
over us, for it is conterminous with morality itself. 
Inasmuch as any act is right , in so far it is God's com- 
mand : inasmuch as it is God's command, in so far it is 
right. 

According, then, to this first grand view of the case, 
it appears that all duty, whether towards ourselves, 
our neighbour, or more immediately to God, is properly 
in strict ethics Religious Duty. 

But beside this primary relation of moral subjects to 
our King, whereby all our duties acquire religious 
character, we stand in several other most intimate rela- 
tions to God, and from the union of these necessarily 
arises the special dirty which constitutes the third great 
branch of practical morality. This directly and ex- 
clusively Religious Duty, comprehending the actions 
and sentiments due by man immediately to his Maker, 
is the subject of the present book. We must briefly 
review the nature of these human and Divine relations 
before investigating the principle of the obligations 
which are their ethical result. 

" Man owes all to God." It is a common kind of 
phrase. We rarely pause to consider what it includes. 
Physically, he owes Him life, here and hereafter, his 
body and his soul, all his past, present, and future pos- 
sessions. Intellectually, he owes Him all he knows, all 



RELIGIOUS DUCT. 



5 



he can eyer know — the mental powers by which he 
acquires knowledge, and the instruction which men, 
books, and nature, have given him. Morally, he owes 
Him freedom— the vast and wondrous power of his own 
will to choose the right and reject the wrong ; and he 
owes Him the inward grace and outward moral provi- 
dence by which he is continually assisted in so doing. 
All these are his debt to God in the one character of his 
Creator } and a religion of gratitude necessarily founds 
itself upon them. But God is man's Judge, as well as 
his Creator. To Him it pertains to uphold the moral 
law throughout the universe of which he is King, 
Every breach of that law must be an offence against 
Him, as every act of obedience to it is one of obedience 
to Him. The sins we have committed during our lives, 
even those which were most directly offences against 
our neighbour or ourselves, were also so truly sins 
against God, that the cry of penitence (overlooking the 
lesser in the enormity of the greater offence) is almost 
justified, " Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and 
done this evil in Thy sight/ 5 We are thus placed 
before our Judge in a different position from that which 
we should have held had we not broken His laws. It 
is true that He knows no " wrath," that His goodness 
remains for ever unchanged while acting in accordance 
with His justice in executing the retribution, which is 
also correction. Nevertheless, ice have become criminals 
before Him. To our religion is added, then, a third 
element beside moral allegiance and gratitude — that of 



6 



RELIGIOUS DUTY. 



contrition. And lastly, God is something else to us 
beside Creator, Benefactor, Teacher, Helper — something 
else beside Moral King and Judge. He is also the End 
and Aim of our whole being. We are created on pur- 
pose that we may know the ineffable glory and bliss of 
loving and adoring Him. We are moral beings, because 
such alone can apprehend his moral perfection ; we are 
immortal, and eternity will not be long enough to learn 
all His goodness, and grow more fit to worship it. In 
Him, and to Him, and for Him, are all things that we 
are or ever shall be- — all the duty, glory, and joy of our 
everlasting existence. 

These things being so, the relation of man to God 
being such as I have described, the task seems no diffi- 
cult one to discover some maxim which shall express, 
at once, all the multitudinous rights of action and senti- 
ment thence arising, the axiom which shall embody all 
our own past and present intuitions of religious duty. 
Whenever these relations in which we stand to God 
have come out clearly before our minds or hearts, when 
we have studied His works and thought of Him as 
Creator, when we have striven for the right and looked 
to Him as Helper, when we have sinned and recognised 
that he was our Judge, when we have rejoiced in 
our human affections and thanked Him as our Father, 
when we have mourned beside the dead and turned to 
Him who alone is Lord of Death and Life, what are the 
intuitions which have come to us concerning the right 
tribute owed to Him ? Indifference, hatred, fear, irre- 



RELIGIOUS DUTY. 



verenee, thanklessness, or thanks of lip-service ? Such 
ideas are absurd. Probably not one of them, save fear, 
has ever even presented itself to a human mind, far less 
commended itself as necessary and universal. Supposing 
that fear has sometimes seemed the fitting tribute from 
the powerless to the Omnipotent, will it stand the test 
of Necessity? Can we imagine no hour of joy, no 
paradise of blameless delights, wherein some other senti- 
ment, save dread, should move the heart of the blessed 
towards the Benefactor ? Has it ever been our own 
sole intuition that we should fear God? "When we have 
awakened from our sins to abhor and renounce them, 
and turned in contrition, and yet in infinite hope of 
succour and restoration, to the Father of the Prodigal, 
was our cry one of slavish fear ? Only in the most im- 
mature and partial religious experience can this senti- 
ment have suggested itself at all, and even here it could 
never be recognised by the mind as of universal obliga- 
tion, as a necessary result in all time and space, and 
under every varying condition of the whole compound 
relation of man to God. But if fear cannot be accepted, 
nor bear the test of a sentiment of universal obligation, 
and if indifference, or irreverence, or thanklessness, be 
too obviously absurd to deserve consideration, what 
sentiment is there remaining which can possibly apply 
to the case ? There is but one, and that is love. The 
canon of Christ offers the definition of man's religious 
duty — ■ 



8 



RELIGIOUS DUTY, 



Thou shalt Love the Lord thy God with all 
thixe Heart, and Soul, axd Strength. 

This answers to the intuitions which, have sprung in 
all our hearts in life's most living hours. And this 
finally approves itself as the one sole " laiv fit for law 
universal" the only principle which we can represent 
to ourselves as applicable to every case, holding good 
for all creatures for ever. 

Love is claimed from us by the perfections we per- 
ceive in our Creator and the benefits we receive from 
Him, and it is actually the only reciprocation possible 
under the circumstances. It is the sole reality in that 
return of debt which the eternal right requires should 
be made to such a benefactor as Grod; and it ought 
to be the germ of every outward religious service or 
sacrifice which, with that love, and springing from it, is 
holy and good, and, without it, is worthless and insulting. 
It is true that objections have been sometimes made to 
the propriety of ranking the love of God as, literally 
speaking, a moral duty. " Love," it is argued, " is an 
emotion which is called forth by the presentation of 
lovable objects, and its nature is necessarily free, 
and unconstrained by the rigid mandates of the moral 
will." This view, if fully carried out, would strike at 
the root of all morality, inasmuch as it woidd forbid the 
attempt to regulate those Emotions which are not only 
the springs of our outward actions, but are themselves 
inward acts 3 far more closely connected than any 



RELIGIOUS DUTY. 



9 



external ones with onr progress towards that virtue of 
rational souls which is the ultimate fulfilment of the 
moral law. It is an indispensable postulate of all sound 
ethics, that the sentiments of all rational free agents 
possess a moral character no less real and necessary 
than their actions. And if this be so, the love of Grod 
must stand in the very foremost rank of those sentiments 
which are eternally and necessarily right for man to 
feel. 

We may prove the same truth negatively. The 
hypothesis is absurd that the performance of any num- 
ber of outward actions of respect, obedience, or worship, 
would fulfil the duty of spiritual beings towards the 
Lord of Spirits, while unaccompanied by any feelings of 
gratitude, trust, or adoration. We, ourselves, who can 
but little discern the inward movements of our brothers 5 
hearts, and who can and do receive benefit from outward 
actions performed in our favour, though unaccompanied 
by genuine sentiments in the actor, even we disdain the 
offering of respectful but insincere words, unloving 
benefits, and heartless eye-service. How doubly mon- 
strous, then, it is to think of outward duty towards God, 
otherwise than as the manifestation of sentiments on 
which the value of those outward acts depends, as shadows 
depend on substance ! There is here no distinction of 
subjective and objective duties, no question of acts 
having an external legality divisible from the internal 
morality of their motives. God can be benefited by 
nothing that the whole created universe can do. There 

b 3 



10 



RELIGIOUS DUTY. 



is no virtue or happiness of His to be aided or produced 
by the children of earth. Our position is clear. We 
owe Him our all, and we must pay that debt to Him 
with Love, or pay it with Mockery. 

We ought then to love God. It is a hateful and 
odious thought, that of a moral being receiving such 
benefits as we receive, and recognising such perfections 
as we recognise, and yet feeling no love for the Good 
and Holy One. Does any man still reply, that what- 
ever he ought to do, he cannot love at word of command? 
Let him ponder a little Who it is that he is commanded 
to love. Cannot he, indeed, love that Being ? Does 
he feel that he must wrench his nature with some ter- 
rible violence, to make himself love the All-adorable 
Lord of Love and Goodness ? Questions like these are 
rank absurdities applied to the religious duty of a 
worshipper of the true God. So long as men believe 
that the Deity has displayed in human history a multi- 
tude of characteristics repugnant to their natural ideas 
of justice and goodness, so long there is perfect reason 
in the complaint that they are commanded to love that 
which, from the constitution of their hearts, they can- 
not love. But the case is reversed the moment we gain 
the blessed faith, that whatever we feel to be just and 
good, that, and infinitely more than that, is God — that 
whatever we feel to be unjust and evil, that He never 
has been nor will be. To love God now is merely to love 
that which vje feel to be lovely — our own ideal of all 
amiable and venerable attributes. Thus the "command" 



RELIGIOUS DUTY. 



11 



to love God, issuing, as it does, from our own true self, 
is simply the legitimation and consecration of our 
highest spontaneous affections, not the forcing of them 
into unnatural channels. As has been often said, it is 
much more the permission, "Thou may est love thy 
Lord/' than the command, "Thou shalt love Him." 
Here is the culminating point of humanity and morality, 
and the result is a sublime and transcendent harmony. 
But, on the other hand, it is not only a permission. So 
weak are we, so easily led away by our lower interests, 
that we continually cease to think of God's claims to our 
love, cease to cherish our holy affections, cease, perhaps, 
to live in such wise as that we dare to love God. Then 
comes in the command, "Thou shalt love the Lord." 
It is a duty incumbent on us to do so. He has a right 
to it : our nature is in disorder and degradation without 
it : the eternal law of the universe is unfulfilled till we 
do it. It is indeed a privilege, a birthright, but tre- 
mendous is our sin if we relinquish or renounce it ! 

One objection, however, to the whole doctrine of reli- 
gious duty (and more especially to that of religious 
worship or service) may possibly have presented itself 
to the reader. "We may owe service," it might be 
said, "to any being whom such service can benefit. 
For example, we owe personal duty to ourselves, and 
can actually benefit our own natures ; we owe social 
duty to our neighbours, and can contribute in reality to 
their welfare. These are intelligible duties, because 
their performance actually tends to a good result. But 



12 



EELTGlOrS DITTY. 



how can we owe a duty to a Being whose lioliness and 
happiness cannot be increased? God does not want 
either the love in our hearts or the outward acts by 
which we display it. Our thanks, adoration, faith, can 
no more make Him happier or better than our blas- 
phemy, sacrilege, or atheism could injure Him. Unless, 
then, as a mere branch of personal duty, as an artifice 
for increasing our own sentiments of gratitude and 
reverence, what is the meaning of a religious duty ? 
Why should we do service to One who cannot be served 
by anything we can do?"* 

Here comes in one of the grand distinctions between 
dependent and independent morality, between a system of 
ethics which assumes the right to be merely the shortest 
path to the useful, and a system which proclaims it to 
be the sacrosanct necessary obligation of all rational 
free agents. If "right" and "useful" were really 
convertible terms, it would be impossible to find any 
warrant for religious services of love and thanksgiving 
other than in the direct mandates of the Being to be 
worshipped ; and these, if accepted as veritable, could, 
on the assumption in question, be only supposed to be 

* " Inter Deistas quidam fuerunt, licet perpauci nuniero, qui omnem 
eultuni etiani internum, rejecerunt, asserentes Deum nihil de illo 
curare, religiosisque actibus non nioveri. " — Angladis Ethica, Pars, ii 
Dis. 1. 

It is necessary often to state objections and difficulties preparatory to 
demonstrating the true ground of doctrines, but it is not always 
necessary to attribute every possible error to an actual flesh and blood 
heretic. 



RELIGIOUS DUTY. 



13 



issued for the benefit and educational training of the 
worshipper. Such, indeed, is the aspect given to their 
cultus by many Churches (especially of the Evangelical 
class), and the result is undoubtedly a lowering of the 
conception of worship from its proper character of the 
most sublime office of which man is capable, to the rank 
of a mere method of improvement, little, if at all, above 
that of listening to sermons or reading books of divinity. 
Further, the worship which is consciously self-educating, 
and nothing more, is, from that very circumstance, dis- 
qualified, in a great measure, from that purpose itself. 
A man who should offer thanks to the Giver of his hap- 
piness solely because he hoped, in accordance with the 
laws of his mind, to increase his own virtue by such 
spiritual gymnastics, such a man's self- prospective 
thanksgivings would possess little or no warming or 
elevating power, even if his system permitted him to 
seek his virtue as an end in itself, and not merely the 
means of his admission to Paradise. Each great branch 
of human duty has its own independent claims as a 
separate law of the eternal right. A man's own virtue 
is the end of his creation. "Be perfect, as your Father 
in heaven is perfect,' ' is the first law of his being, which 
can be postponed to no other. But as it is not merely 
to warm his own benevolent affections that he is bound 
to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, so neither is 
it merely as an excitement of his sentiments of grati- 
tude and veneration that he is bound to offer thanks- 
giving and adoration for the infinite blessings and 



14 



RELIGIOUS DUTY. 



perfections of his Creator. He is bound to worship 
because it is right that such a being as man should 
worship such a being as God. It is as much a part of 
eternal justice that the rational recipient of unnumbered 
benefits should return gratitude to his benefactor, as it 
is a part of justice that a murderer should be punished. 
It is Right, necessarily and immutably Right, ante- 
cedently to all consideration of additional benefits to be 
obtained by such gratitude for the creature, or the ex- 
pression of a desire for it by the Creator. 

In the first place, then, as I have said, worship is 
demanded abstractedly by the eternal moral law. We 
have sufficient intimation of this truth by intuition ; 
nay, the recognition of it seems to have long preceded 
the Evangelical idea of worship as merely the " means of 
grace/' Heathens, in very low stages of religious deve- 
lopment, have counted thanksgiving as a debt obviously 
due to their invisible benefactors— to J upiter the Libe- 
rator, to Phoebus Epicurios, to iEsculapius the Healer. 
All ancient liturgies, Jewish and Christian, are full of 
that Praise which the more or less anthropomorphic 
creed of the worshipper substituted for adoration* 

In the second place, worship is incumbent on us as 
the means whereby we may obtain God's aid towards 

* "For with us, too" (as with, the early and middle periods of the 
Church), "the burden, the staple of the service is, it maybe confidently 
affirmed, and will be more fully shown hereafter, Praise." — The Prin- 
ciples of Divine, Service in the English Church. By Philip Freeman. 
Chap. i. sect. vii. 



RELIGIOUS DUTY. 



15 



the perfecting of our natures by His grace and inspira- 
tion, It is obvious that if we be morally bound to seek 
our personal virtue, we must be bound to seek the best 
assistance offered thereto. 

From the direct rightfulness of the case, arising 
simply from the relative positions of man and God, all 
religious Offences stand condemned, and the Duties pro- 
ceed of Thanksgiving, Adoration, Repentance, Faith, 
and Self-consecration. 

From the indirect rightfulness of the case, arising 
from the assistance offered therein to personal virtue, 
the duty proceeds of Prayer. 

The various religious obligations deducible from the 
canon of love to Grod may now be discussed in succession, 

Like social and personal duties, those of religion may 
of course be either fulfilled, or neglected, or contravened. 
The fulfilment of our duties towards Grod is (what may 
be termed) religious Virtue ; the neglect of them is a 
religious Fault ; the contravention of them a religious 
Offence. 

Religious obligations may be included under the heads 
of Thanksgiving, Adoration, Prayer, Repentance, Faith, 
and Self-consecration. The first three are the right 
acts for man to perform towards God ; the last three the 
right conditions of his soul. 

Religious faults may be similarly classified, as Thank - 
lessness, Irreverence, Prayerless habits, Impenitence, 
Scepticism, and Worldliness. 

Religious offences are Blasphemy, Apostacy, Hypo- 



16 



RELIGIOUS DUTY. 



crisy, Perjury, Sacrilege, Persecution, Atheism, Pan- 
theism, Polytheism, Idolatry, and Demonolatry. 

I shall commence by discussing Religious Offences 
and Faults, of which a slight notice will show the im- 
morality, and then proceed to a more ample view of 
religious Obligations. 



CHAPTER II. 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



SECTION I. 

BLASPHEMY. 

The moral law requires us to love God. This love is 
claimed by His moral perfection and by His beneficence 
specially displayed towards us. Now, a love which 
arises from adoration of moral perfection and gratitude 
for benefits received is manifestly exclusively a Re- 
verential Love. In such a case it cannot be said that 
Reverence is founded on Love, but that Love is the 
climax and culmination of Reverence, the flower which 
ought to bloom out of its highest shoot. Further, in 
the case of a purely spiritual object of love, no human 
affection, no pathological liking, being possible, the 
simply moral sentiment alone is capable of application. 
To detract then from Reverence towards God is to cut 
from under us the sole support of Divine love. Man 
could not pay, nor God receive, the smallest bud of love 
growing on any other stem. 

Of all actions which detract from Reverence, the first 
which present themselves are Blasphemies. These are 
not mere Faults of Irreverence, negations of due 



IS 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



honour. They are affirmative insults. The question 
which involuntarily suggests itself' on contemplating in 
this light the sin of Blasphemy is, " How comes it that 
such a crime has ever been committed ? Where could 
this world produce the temptation overwhelming enough 
to force any rational creature to so mad an act P" 

Alas ! it is precisely the sin of all others most com- 
monly perpetrated with temptations so small, that the 
moralist is at a loss to define wherein they may consist! 

Objectively considered, the degree of guilt of a blas- 
phemy is of course determined by the amount of con- 
tumely expressed therein. This standard, however, will 
be modified, and often reversed, by the subjective mea- 
sure of the blasphemer's temptation. Phrases so hideous 
that to repeat them would be itself impiety have often 
been wrung by sharp agony from human lips. Are 
these to be compared to the sacrilegious scoffs of men in 
health and ease, whom the vanity of creating surprise 
at their audacity, or the merest wantonness of irreligion 
and carelessness, lead to hurl insults at the awful ma- 
jesty of God P 

In these, as in all other religious offences, there is a 
singular sort of self-deception often existing in the mind 
of the offender. Accustomed to dread only the punish- 
ment, and not the guilt of sin, the man no sooner rises 
so far above anthropomorphic ideas of God, as to see that 
He can feel no personal vindictiveness against those who 
offend Him, than he leaps to the conclusion that there 
is no further fear of the great Judge inflicting any 



BLASPHEMY. 



19 



retribution whatever on religious delinquencies. It is 
almost superfluous to refute such, a delusion. Sin against 
God can possess none of the palliations which the cha- 
racter or conduct of any other being sinned against may 
place in behalf of the offender, Objectively, therefore, 
religious offences are the greatest of sins. Ingratitude 
to a human benefactor, be it never so little excusable, 
cannot be equal in guilt to ingratitude to the Divine 
Benefactor, whose gifts have incalculably exceeded all 
others, and from whose love no mutability or fickleness 
has ever detracted. This moral guilt God, as Judge of 
the universe, will assuredly visit in exact proportion to 
its absolute demerit. It is not a vindictive being, 
neither an unheeding one, whom the blasphemer reviles ; 
but it is an all-righteous Judge, an ever- vigilant Witness, 
in whose presence he commits an offence of magnitude 
stupendous and terrific. 

The mildest form of this sin, which yet must be classed 
under the same head, is the practice of " taking God's 
name in vain " — using, in carelessness and jest, a refer- 
ence to Him whose awful holiness should be present to 
our hearts in solemn veneration whensoever we think of 
Him. Of course custom is commonly the immediate 
cause of blasphemies of this sort ; but it may well " give 
no pause " to think how such habits can ever have been 
formed and have become common. How little can any 
man revere, in his graver hours, the dread sanctity of 
his God, who, in his lighter ones, is for ever associating 
His name with folly and profaneness ! 



20 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



SECTION II. 

APOSTACY. 

Between the offences of Blasphemy, Hypocrisy, and 
Perjury, and partaking of the guilt of all three, lies that 
of Apostacy. 

It is obvious that to constitute a moral crime this act 
must be either— 

1st. A genuine lapse from a higher to a lower faith, 
or— 

2nd. A false recantation of a faith really held by the 
apostate, and recanted hypocritically, from hope of some 
advantage or fear of some injury. 

As it is impossible, according to the constitutions of 
our minds, that the lure of a reward or threat of punish- 
ment can actually change the opinions of any one, and 
as such lures and threats can only warp the judgment 
where moral earnestness is deficient, we may consider 
that the first class of apostacies must always result either 
from such spiritual unfaithfulness as blinds the inward 
sight to the difference of truth and falsehood, or to such 
moral declension as exposes the judgment to be perverted 
by external hopes and fears. The offence then lies in 
such unfaithfulness and declension. The final act of 
profession is only the appearance on the surface of deep- 



APOSTACT. 



21 



seated mischief below. There is no offence, however, of 
which we are less competent than this to form a judg- 
ment of guilt in any individual case. Even when we 
have convinced ourselves that one creed is actually purer 
than another, ivhen both are thoroughly developed, it by 
no means follows that the particular proselyte to the 
lower creed has understood the developments of either. 
Probably, in nine cases out of ten, public recantations 
which seem to us apostacies are actually, so far as the 
individual is concerned, the renunciation of doctrines 
which brought him no spiritual light, and the adoption 
of others among which he found some truths specially 
needful to his soul. 

The second class of apostacies, or those recantations 
which hope or fear leads a man falsely to make, con- 
stitute an offence against God of patent heinousness. 
That light which has been vouchsafed to us we deny 
and repudiate. AYe speak and act a lie in God's sight, 
concerning directly God's own truth. I have said that 
the sin is related in guilt both to blasphemy and perjury. 
To the latter it belongs, inasmuch as the sanctity of the 
subject, even if no direct oath be made, involves the case 
in similar reference to God. To the former it belongs 
also, from the fact that the apostate must always profess 
to believe and actually assert God to be less perfect than 
in his heart he knows Him to be. He blasphemes, by 
affirming that the heathen Jove's character and history 
were attributable to the Father of Christ, or that a wafer 
could become a portion of Godhead. 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES, 



All apostaey committed from hope of some advantage, 
as to obtain favour, rise to a higher rank, or form a 
desirable alliance, is so manifestly impious that it is 
unnecessary to discuss it farther. 

Very different, however, from the renegade who seeks 
reward, is the unhappy apostate who shrinks from such 
punishments as human tyranny has often inflicted on 
the professors of an outlawed faith. Here is, indeed, the 
ultimate test and supreme trial of morals, that a man be 
called on to choose between death and a crime. 

That he is morally bound to suffer any torments, and 
sacrifice his life, sooner than renounce his religious faith, 
it ought to be superfluous to demonstrate. Yet, since 
the happiness-seeking philosophers have leavened the 
whole mass of popular thought, it has become not 
uncommon to hear it asked, " "Were the martyrs bound 
to suffer as they did ? Should we, in similar persecu- 
tions, be morally obliged to follow their example ? Xo 
doubt their acts were heroic and magnificent, but, 
surely, though duty may sanction, it cannot demand 
such a sacrifice. "We might refuse it, and commit 
no heinous crime after all. TThat signify a few words 
of recantation obviously insincere, compared to a human 
life?" 

In the first place, it may be observed that the 
Personal duty of veracity ought, singly considered, 
to be felt sufficient to forbid all such lying recanta- 
tions. The law of truth pennits of no exceptions. 
A man must not lie to save his own or any other life. 



APOSTACY, 



23 



Nay, as personal virtue is the end of the creation 
of each rational soul, the achievement of so noble a 
degree of it as the sacrifice of life in the cause of 
truth would be one of the terminations of this stage of 
existence which a man, fully imbued with the desire of 
that holy end, would accept in all readiness and cheer- 
fulness.* Secondly, false recantations are also offences 
against the Social duty of conducing to our neighbour's 
virtue. God has granted us a certain truth, and instead 
of sharing it with our brother, and proving to him how 
dear and sacred we hold it, we solemnly abjure it before 
him, and show it to be powerless over our dastard fears. 

Thirdly, and chiefly, false recantations are, as we 
have seen, Religious offences of direst guilt, involving at 
once perjury and blasphemy, the solemn, deliberate 
repudiation of God's most sacred lessons of truth. 

It is no marvel that the noblest human souls have 
preferred all deaths and agonies sooner than commit a 
crime like this, which seems the direct self-exclusion of 
the apostate from all future enlightenment of God's 
spirit. How dare a man hope to be led further to truth, 
nay, to be permitted to retain any spiritual sight, after 
he has deliberately abjured the light God's mercy has 
already bestowed ? 

* If we may trust the history, the heathen Begulus attained this 
supreme achievement of virtue ; and that, too, when men believed the 
future life to be only a realm of shade, and that — 

• ' Better, though on the worst of terms, is life 
Than the most glorious death." 



24 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



But none the less — ay, all the more — for its imperative 
obligation, ought we to look to that awful duty of con- 
stancy with a veneration, making the martyrs' names 
the dearest in all human story, the glorious incentives 
to every achievement of virtue. They are the heroes of 
the van- guard, who have stormed the citadel while we 
are lying without feebly beleaguering the outermost 
walls. And shall we dare, like the cold-blooded critics 
of the last degenerate age, to make light of those deeds 
which are the glory of our race ? It will freeze every 
generous impulse in our hearts to do so. " Vanity," 
" love of admiration," these, in sooth, are the springs to 
which men like Gibbon, writing in their luxurious 
libraries, would strive to trace the martyrs' valour. 
"Vanity?" If vanity can do miracles like these, if 
vanity can make men stand firm to be devoured by lions 
and torn by human devils, to be lashed, crushed, flayed, 
and slowly roasted to death, then this vanity must be a 
splendid, a stupendous thing ! something, I ween, 
capable of more glorious achievements than any senti- 
ment in the powdered head of an eighteenth century 
historian ! Away with such folly. 

Few evidences of scepticism show it to be more pro- 
found than the effort to trace great events to base causes, 
and heroic actions to degraded motives. There is, in 
truth, nothing more unphilosophic than such an attempt. 
The human soul, with all its failings, is capable of being 
roused by noble motives and great demands, as it can 
never be wakened by selfish and petty ones. Who has 



APOSTACY. 



20 



not seen how some poor, feeble-brained man or woman 
has answered the call of some emergency of affection, 
and has displayed a courage and wisdom such as the 
selfish cares of ordinary life had never brought to light F 
And when we see a really great achievement of human 
virtue, we may ever feel assured that there is a great 
and a true motive in the heart of him who accomplishes 
it. Perhaps he does not recognise it himself: perhaps 
he may profess that he has some lower one — the hope 
of heaven or fear of hell. Believe him not. He could 
not have done a really noble deed had it been so. 
Love of God or love of man must needs have nourished 
the root of every martyr's palm. 

And what, after all, if, with the pure love of God, the 
sufferer for religion's sake has sometimes asked also for 
some last drops of the sweet love of human hearts to 
taste once more upon his cross of agony ? What if that 
" thirst for the crown of martyrdom ' ' which the hap- 
piness-seeking moralists of our day dare to speak of 
contemptuously, what if this almost superhuman ambition 
have mingled sometimes into one aspiration the elements 
of that Divine love which longs to suffer in God's cause, 
with that thrice purified human love which desires to 
bequeath a memory which shall be a religion— what of 
this, 0 scorner ? Are thy motives in seeking ease and 
wealth, and the pitiful distinctions of social life, so super- 
exalted, that thou may est justly point the finger at the 
one poor human hope which the martyr has not resigned 
upon God's altar ? 

c 



26 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



Never must we suffer the honour of these heroes of 
our race to be tarnished by vile suspicions ; never must 
we rob a leaf from their palmy crowns. Such glories as 
theirs are of endless use in showing us what man may 
become of great and holy, even here on earth. They 
are " the stars of our mortal night/ 9 and to draw a cloud 
over them is to consign ourselves to gloom. But pointing 
to them, believing, as we may believe, that what was of 
such radiant glory to human eyes was no less pure 
before Him who saw their consecrated souls, how fear- 
lessly may we answer all the dark doubts and accusations 
brought against humanity! Is that nature "totally 
depraved," all baseness, all weakness, which has proved 
its capacity for such transcendent virtue ? Against the 
hosts of sin we set the noble army of martyrs, and we 
challenge all the fanatics in the world to scorn a race 
from which that Grod-like band has been recruited from 
age to age in every land beneath the sun. Herein, too, 
lies the glory of it, that no Church can claim to be the 
sole " mother of the martyrs," or say that the nature 
originally " depraved " has been regenerated in her 
communion alone.* Every creed, even down to hea- 

* I have been anxious to form a list of the martyrs who suffered 
expressly for their denial of that doctrine of redemption whose accept- 
ance the popular creed asserts can alone restore virtue to our degenerate 
race. It is very difficult to construct such a martyrology, owing to the 
extreme paucity of sympathizers to record them — a paucity, by the 
way, which removes from these martyrs the last suspicion of a motive 
lower than the purest self-devotion. The following are a few of the 
best known : — 



APOSTACY. 



27 



thenisms, poor and low, have sent their contingent to 
the ranks ; nay, it is the rule that men and women 
prefer martyrdom to apostacy, and the exceptions are 
the cases wherein they have swerved before any torment 
which cruelty could invent. 

The guilt of apostacy which would attach itself to a 
recantation uttered from fear of death belongs, of course, 
with infinitely less palliation, to those repudiations of 
religious faith which are made continually in our day, 
from motives of interest, subservience, dread of ridicule, 

Valentine Gentilis, a Neapolitan Arian, suffered death at Berne, 
1566. (Mosheim.) 

Jacob Palseologus, of Chio, burnt at Rome for Unitarianism. 
(Mosheim.) 

Servetus, burnt by Calvin for Anti-Trinitarianism. 

George Yan Paris, burnt in Smithfield, temp. Edward VI., at the 
request of Cranmer, for denying the proper Divinity of Christ. (Tayler's 
Retrospect, p. 324.) 

Francis Wright, burnt for Deism at Norwich, in 1588. 

Bartholomew Legate, burnt in Smithfield in 1612, for Arianism. 
His life was offered at the stake, but refused. (See Robert Yaughan's 
Memorials of the Stuart Dyn., p. 331.) 

Edward Wightman, burnt at Lichfield for Ebionite and Arian here- 
sies, 1612. (He and Legate were the last martyrs burnt in England.) 

Bainham — burnt in Smithfield for asserting that "if a Jew, Turk, or 
Saracen do trust in God and keep His law, he is a good Christian" — ■ 
may perhaps be regarded in a still more interesting light, for his heresy 
consisted in denying the importance of creeds to salvation, yet he died 
sooner than recant his own. (See Froude, Hist. Eng., vol. ii. p. 85.) 

To these may doubtless be added the hundreds of Arian, Jewish, and 
Moorish martyrs of the Middle Ages. Among Confessors stand fore- 
most the Unitarians Davidis and Emlyn. 

c 2 



28 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



in a word, from the thousand petty hopes and fears 
which our social state brings to bear on the actions of 
daily life. In some cases these hopes and fears may, 
even now^ be of considerable force. Some charitable 
persons and societies do not scruple to offer the bribe of 
their dole to the subscription of their peculiar confession 
of faith. To refuse such terms when that assistance is 
really wanted must be an act of virtue in whose per- 
formance the charitable association has the share which 
Calvin had in the virtue of Servetus. On the other 
hand, parents, employers, teachers, in a word, superiors 
of all classes, work on the fears of those beneath them 
in thousands of cases, and bend to an outward acquies- 
cence in their creed many a soul which inwardly revolts 
from it. Even when there is no actual power of perse- 
cution, ridicule, or withdrawal of wonted kindness and 
affection, are influences of terrible weight on natures 
over -sensitive or deficient in moral courage. 

Very miserable sophistries are current on the subject 
of our duties in these matters. Few of us have not 
much to repent in the way of unworthy silences on our 
true faith, silences which, if caused by tenderness, were 
weak — if by any fear, cowardly and base. Vast numbers 
of free-thinkers especially, and, above all, the elder 
deists, seem actually to have accepted their antagonists' 
view of their own creed, and to consider that the next 
best thing to not knowing a truth was the not spreading 
it. Others, like Sterling, say that, as they are not pro- 
fessional teachers of religion, they may teach (even their 



APOSTACY. 



29 



own children!) the opposite errors! It is marvellous 
that men do not see the turpitude, religious, personal, 
and social, involved in such conduct. For ourselves, a 
life in which the inward and the outward are in har- 
mony is absolutely needful to all moral health and pro- 
gress ; and that the stunted religious growth of many 
free-thinkers may be attributable to this inner rotten- 
ness, no one who knows his own nature can doubt. 

As to our neighbour, the simplest principles of bene- 
volence require us to share with him the truths which 
have been vouchsafed to us, and, even if he will not 
accept them from us, to set them before him freely with 
all the attractions we can give them. Each religious 
truth is an aid to virtue, it is a thought to enlarge the 
mind and to make it better. True, our power to spread 
it may seem almost null, but Moses was "slow of speech," 
yet his stammered words are echoing still, and shall for 
ever echo down " the corridors of time." Who knows 
what fires we may kindle if we will but speak that which 
we know — fires " to shine all England through ;" ay, 
through all the world, perchance, when we lie sleeping ? 
It is not the strength of the hand which holds the torch, 
but the flame which crowns it, which causes the fuel to 
blaze. But be our powers small or great, they are those 
which God has committed to us. TTe are more account- 
able in his sight for not exchanging this talent of truth, 
than for hoarding all the gold in a miser's coffers. 
There is no measuring the consequences which would 
ensue if we all took to heart this duty of " casting our 



30 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES, 



spiritual bread on the waters." Twelve fishermen 
changed the world's history by possessing a truth and 
believing that God required them to spread it. " There 
is plenty of truth in the world/' says Philip Harwood, 
"but until it is spoken truth, nobody is the better for it. 
There is truth enough in England at this moment to 
bring the whole ecclesiastical and sectarian power of the 
country to the ground in one week, if it were but spoken 
truth," * Suppose that Luther had been checked by his 
fears from without, his self-distrusts within ! f 

* Lecture on Priestley, p. 13. 

t 4 4 How often have I," he writes, "in the bitterness of my soul, 
pressed myself with the Papists' argument, ' Art thou alone wise ? are 
all others in error ? have they been mistaken for so long a time ? What 
if you are yourself mistaken, and are dragging with you so many souls 
into eternal condemnation ?"' — Sir J. Stephen's Essays, b. i. p. 315. 



HYPOCRISY. 



31 



SECTION III. 

HYPOCRISY, 

In the preceding section I spoke of that form of Hy- 
pocrisy which is more accurately classed as Apostacy, 
and consists in the profession of a creed in which we do 
not really believe, or the abjuration of one which in our 
hearts we hold to be true. Hypocrisy, as I shall here 
regard it, does not refer to the intellectual creed, but to 
the religious and moral feelings. It is the offence of 
pretending that we are more pious and virtuous than 
we know ourselves to be, or (singular paradox) of pre- 
tending that we do not feel and care about religion and 
duty, as in truth we do. 

Assuming that we are bound to " love God with all 
our hearts," and that He, at all times, sees into those 
hearts, and knows whether we fulfil this obligation, it is 
clear enough that to act before Him the living lie of a 
pretended piety is, in an outrageous degree, offensive 
and insulting. It is unnecessary to enlarge on a topic 
so fully understood. The actual gross hypocrisy of the 
Tartuffe and the Mawworm is abhorred and condemned 
by every heart and tongue. 

Not equally recognised, however, is the guilt of some 
of the milder forms of this vice, wherein the simplicity 



32 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



of religion is still, although less grossly, violated. Nay, 
to many the concealment of serious religions feelings 
under a light demeanour is, doubtless, an act of hypocrisy 
done out of the very hatred of the offence in its opposite 
development— yet, in whatever way we falsify our true 
religious condition to the eyes of our fellows, must it not 
always involve offence before God ? Are we not bound 
to live out simply and uprightly before men that which 
He sees us to be ; to acknowledge alike our heart's fealty 
to our liege Lord, and the miserable short-comings by 
which we fail in our allegiance ? 

In the first place, there is an hypocrisy of appearing 
better than we are, which shelters itself under the pre- 
tence of serving as an example to others. The man is 
not base enough to seek worldly gain or aggrandizement 
by such means, but he conceals his sins and errors on 
the ground of " preserving his usefulness," " saving the 
credit of his sacred profession," not "throwing a 
stumbling-block before the weak," or " giving occasion 
to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme." He also 
attends public worship, observes the Sabbath, frowns 
down free talk, and affects great gravity on religious 
matters ; all for the sake of good example, and because 
such things, though of no consequence to his soul, are 
doubtless so to the weak and ignorant. What ruin to 
the singleness of a human heart must be such a course 
as this ! How all real earnest repentance for a sin must 
be stopped, when, instead of sorrow for the past and 
resolution for the future, the mind is occupied by efforts 



HYPOCRISY. 33 

to make tlie spectators believe it has never slipped, or, 
perhaps, that its fall was no moral lapse at all ! To be 
a contrite sinner in the eyes of God, while we strive to 
be a stainless saint in the eyes of men- — what a contra- 
diction ! The pretence, too, of avoiding injury to the 
cause of religion is utterly futile. The world always 
does know, sooner or later, the most secret errors. There 
is no word more true in the Bible than that which 
declares " that what is spoken in the ear shall be pro- 
claimed on the house-tops." Hypocrisy only adds a 
double shame to the sins of " professors." And if there 
be any way in which erring man may really help his 
brother's soul, it is by showing him that he hates his 
own sin so heartily that he is willing to bear its shame, 
and hastens to renounce it openly and utterly. The 
more the repentant man is raised above us by age, 
character, parenthood — the more his frank avowal of 
error would affect us beneficially. Of all this much will 
be said hereafter in discussing the subject of repentance. 
As for the attendance at worship, &c, " for the sake of 
example," it is marvellous how any human creatures 
have ever had the presumption to entertain such an 
idea. Let any sane man consider what he does when he 
enters a church, and ask himself how his " exemplary " 
behaviour therein must appear to God, and I cannot but 
suppose he will be sufficiently shocked to abandon such 
attempts for the future. For, either he must intend 
really to worship, to thank, to adore, and pray to the 
great Lord of all, or he must intend to make an outward 

c 3 



34 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



show of so doing without any uplifting of soul. The 
latter conduct is grossly insulting to that God who 
watches him entering, with affected meekness, His house 
of prayer, and going through a pantomime of supplication 
and adoration which he declines to offer in earnest to 
that awful Searcher of hearts ! On the other hand, if 
he intends really to pray and give thanks, is it not the 
extreme of folly and presumption to think of performing 
such acts (the most solemn and sublime a created being 
can aspire to do) for the sake — not of his own soul, 
which he is imploring God to save — not of the endless 
mercies for which he is thanking his Benefactor — not of 
the Holiness he is adoring — but to show his neighbours 
that he thinks it fit and proper that men should worship 
God ! Conceive a man speaking out to God such ideas 
as these ! Conceive him commencing his prayers by 
the preamble, " 0 Lord, I come into Thy presence prin- 
cipally that I may show my servants, and my poor 
neighbours, that I consider it right and proper to 
honour Thee. And, being here, I confess I have sinned 
grievously," &c, &c. 

Either " going to Church for example's sake" means 
this, or it means nothing, and the sooner we abolish the 
cant of it the better. 

On the other hand, the man whose hypocrisy con- 
sists in making himself appear worse than he is, stands 
in a position scarcely less false and morally wrong. 
Whatever his motive be — the fear of ridicule, or hatred 
of the opposite canting sort of hypocrisy, or false 



HYPOCRISY. 



35 



humility* — in any case lie sins both against God, his 
fellows, and his own soul. For ourselves, nothing is 
more needful to the health of conscience than that our 
inward life and outward profession should be in harmony. 
Well said Chaucer— 

" Truth, to thine own heart thy soul shall save." 

If we desire to grow better than we are, we must, in the 
first place, be openly what we are. We must live out 
our own life of duty faithfully, uprightly, humbly, never 
trying to conceal our faults, and making no prudery 
about such poor withered charms as our virtues ever 
possess. The life of virtue is before all things a life of 
simplicity. The man who professes selfish worldly 
motives when he is conscious of better ones, who jests 
about lax and vicious habits when his own are pure, 
runs most imminent risk of very shortly adopting those 
motives in earnest, and falling actually into those evil 
habits. When good thoughts come to him, as they 
come to us all, he is placed in the contemptible dilemma 
of either keeping silent because they are good, or uttering 
them with a blush, mayhap an apologetic sneer. But in 
larger ways than these, also, the position in which we 
stand with our fellows reacts on our own minds, and in 
a thousand different channels brings to us good or evil 
influences according as this position is true or false. 

* " Dost thou for humility's sake lie ? Know that God doth not 
accept thy lying humility." — St. Augustine, Serm. cxxxi. 



36 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



Iii social duty such hypocrisy makes us offenders also. 
To show our brothers the " practicability of virtue,"* 
that is, of a hearty pursuit of it, even with all the failings 
they see, is the one great service we can render to their 
moral natures, and instead of this we do them the 
grievous injury of countenancing their errors. Xone 
may calculate the influence which we exert over each 
other in these ways for good or evil ; none may calculate 
the good which one individual may accomplish by simply 
and invariably (whenever it may be done without pre- 
sumption) upholding the right in every argument at 
which he chances to be present, the true, just, kind, 
noble view of every question mooted before him ; none 
may calculate how the petty, but most grievous oppres- 
sions of domestic life are repressed by the knowledge 
that one spectator sees and reprehends them, if it be 
but by a reproving look to the offender, an encouraging 
smile to the sufferer ; none may calculate how many bad 
feelings die out under the consciousness that their utter- 
ance will find no sympathy, and how many good ones 
blossom and bear precious fruit in their natural atmo- 
sphere of confidence. In the case of very close relation- 
ships, where such influences for good or evil go on reacting 
immediately, the result is soon visible. A little prepon- 
derating good or evil at first start often decides the 
whole upward or downward tendency in the characters 
of husbands and wives for life. It is true that mere 



* See Kant's Didactic of Ethics. 



HYPOCRISY. 



37 



"negative virtue is always impotent, Divines tell us that 
" man brings with, him a corrupt nature into the world," 
that " one bad example can draw him into further wick- 
edness than twenty good ones will avail for his refor- 
mation," that " one corrupting discourse will instil more 
evil than twenty demonstrations from the pulpit will be 
able to overcome."* It is all very true as regards the 
powerlessness of " twenty examples " of no other good 
than external decent demeanour, or <c twenty demon- 
strations" of utter platitudes, such as we commonly hear 
from the pulpit. But let the examples be of living, 
loving, energetic virtue, the " demonstrations "— 

* ' Words fierily furnaced 
In the blast of a life which has straggled in earnest, "+ 

and we shall hear another story of their influence. The 
kingdom of heaven will spread like the " little leaven," 
and shoot aloft like the tiny " mustard seed." But all 
influence for good is abdicated by him who is either 
weak enough to be ashamed of his true honour, or un- 
faithful enough to shrink from committing himself in the 
eyes of men to a consistent course of virtue. And lastly, 
towards Grod what cowardice, what meanness it is for a 
man to hesitate to own openly his allegiance to duty, to 
fear to wear always on his breast the badge of his liege 
Lord ! Truly there are canting, whining formulas, 

* Jones of Nayland, Serm. xxiv. 
t Lowell, said of Theodore Parker, 



38 



RELIGIOUS OFFEXCE8. 



which a self-respecting spirit will infallibly spurn ; but 
when is a man ever so manly as when, amid the thought- 
less or the scoffing, he simply avows that he does believe 
in the God of Heaven, and does desire to obey His 
righteous law ? 

It must not be urged that such simple acknowledg- 
ment of fealty as this, is in the remotest way to be iden- 
tified with that profaning of sacred feelings by exposure 
which is even more odious as regard religious affections 
than human ones. The distinction is immense, and is 
recognised on all hands in every other relation. Before 
an enemy every son will proudly confess his father, every 
soldier his sovereign. If either ever stand by silent 
while parent or king are insulted, and claim not to be 
his child or servant, we do not deem it " delicacy," but 
meanness and poltroonery. But, on the other hand, to 
speak to a stranger of the inner affections of the heart, 
for a husband to describe his tenderness for his wife, a 
friend for a friend, is felt by every one to be worse than 
indecorous — unfeeling. The deep personal sentiments, 
whether human or religious, are so sacred that no hand 
save that of love should ever be permitted to draw aside 
their veil. There is a spiritual immodesty as well as a 
corporeal one, and both are hideous. 

Yet I have sometimes thought that there lies a large 
margin beyond these purely personal experiences and 
sentiments, wherein we well might strive to meet our 
fellow-creatures' sympathies far oftener than we do. 
Our brothers are not all enemies, all scoffers, for all that 



HYPOCRISY. 



39 



fanatics may say. In thousands and millions of hearts 
at this moment we may be assured a love warmer than 
we know is glowing unseen, or smouldering for want of 
aid which we perhaps might give with a few words. 
That we ought sometimes to share such blessed sym- 
pathies, to strive to kindle and cherish each other's good, 
none will deny. But how is this ever to be done if we 
take such precautions never to reveal any share of our 
own feelings till our brother has shown us his ? Who 
is to begin ? I doubt not, if we sought it more, and in 
fitting time and place, we should often find that between 
us and God's other children, instead of a barrier of sepa- 
ration, there is a bond of tenderest and holiest union, 



40 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES, 



SECTION IV, 

PERJURY, 

Another form of direct insult to God is Perjury. It is 
a mooted question among moralists whether a judicial 
oath can properly be considered a " calling on God to 
witness our words," or a simple expression of our con- 
viction that He does witness them. Under either view 
an oath is an introduction of God's name into trans- 
actions not strictly religious, and its lawfulness stands 
open to the question which from very early times has 
been asked, " Is it consistent with the reverence we owe 
to God, thus to make His name a guarantee of veracity 
in the petty concerns of human life ?" * 

* The Christian ethics of swearing are altogether undeterminable, 
Christ says (Matt. v. 34), " Swear not at all." St. James repeats the 
injunction (James v. 12) : ' * Above all things, my brethren, swear 
not." Yet, not to mention the instances in the Old Testament (e.g., 
Psalm ex. 4 ; Gen. xxii. 16 ; ISTum. xiv. 28) wherein God Himself is 
represented as performing the act, in Him so incomprehensible, we 
find also the chiefest of the Apostles swearing in his inspired writings 
(2 Cor. i. 23) : " Moreover I call God for a record upon my soul/' &c. ; 
and (Gal. i. 20), < ' Behold, before God, I lie not." St. Chrysostom 
tried to escape the difficulty by the dangerous expedient of a shifting 
morality: "What, then, is not swearing of the Evil One? Yes, 
indeed, it is altogether of the Evil One, that is now, after so high a rule 
of self-restraint, but then not so. But how, one may say, should the 
same thing be at one time good and at another not good ? Nay, I say 



PERJURY. 



41 



The intuitive view of the case would, it seems, be 
this : that, as God is the Supreme Judge of the uni- 
verse, wherever the sacred interests of justice are at 
stake it must be His justice which is concerned, and we 
may fearlessly consecrate our acts by invoking His 
presence as witness. Also, when a man undertakes an 
office to which solemn moral obligations are attached, 
such as a legislator's or a magistrate's, a minister of reli- 
gion's or a husband's, it seems perfectly reverent that his 
engagement to perforin those sacred duties should be 
made with an appeal to Grod. On the other hand, to 
take oaths for the convenience of a mercantile trans- 
action, and use God's name to save other security, this 
is so obviously profane, that if custom did not blind him 
to its nature, no pious person could endure to do it.* 

the very contrary, how could it help becoming good and not good, 
while all things else are crying aloud that they are so — the fruits of 
the earth, the arts, and all things else ? And why do I mention these 
things, when killing, which among all is acknowledged to be of the 
Eyil One, caused Phinehas to be honoured with the priesthood, and 
Abraham also, on becoming, not a manslayer only, but, which was far 
worse, the slayer of his child, won more and more approbation?" 
(Chrys., Horn, xiv.) Slippery grounds, these, of traditional morals. 
St. Paul's Epistles were written behveen the issuing of the inspired 
precepts of Jesus and James. Was he inspired to disobey them ? 

* "A judge may acquire a knowledge of the truth by the oath of 
the parties, if he cannot otherwise ascertain it. But let no man of 
sense take an oath in vain, or on a trifling occasion ; for the man who 
takes an oath in vain shall be punished in this life or the next. 
Headlong in utter darkness shall the impious wretch tumble into hell 
who, being interrogated in a judicial inquiry, answers one question 
falsely." — Institutes of Menu, b. vi. v. 109, and b. xii. v. 16. 



42 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



Supposing the oath, taken to be on a lawful matter, of 
what nature is the guilt of perjury? Excluding all 
consideration whether the false witness we give be for 
or against any one, or whether benevolent or malevolent 
motives may incite us, the sin is this : we appeal to Him 
to witness a lie, of whose law that lie is an infraction, 
and thereby we insult Him in a manner at once out- 
rageous and complex ; Grod's omnipresence, His legisla- 
tive and His retributive characters, being each especially 
contemned, and in the peculiarly offensive manner of an 
outward semblance of respect. 

This crime is manifestly so great, that even the most 
abandoned criminals have commonly showed a dread of 
committing it. It ought to be equally borne in mind 
by legislators, or any persons imposing oaths, that to 
require them of our fellow-creatures when we have 
reason to fear they will be taken falsely, is a social 
offence of deep character — it is leading our brother into 
the temptation of an enormous sin. The irreverent 
manner in which oaths are often administered, and the 
levity displayed by lawyers in their questions to sworn 
witnesses, are of course offences to be classed under the 
head of blasphemy. 

Of the casuistics of perjury nothing need be said. 
Those moralists who admit that the law of truth has 
exceptions are necessarily sorely puzzled when the case 
becomes complicated with oaths ; but he who holds that 
"nothing can justify a lie" has no difficulty in adding 
that, a fortiori, nothing can justify a perjury. 



SACRILEGE, 



43 



SECTION V, 

SACRILEGE, 

An unusual number of errors have crept into the popular 
idea of this sin. They have arisen from the common 
anthropomorphous views of the nature and character 
of the Being against whom it is committed, and it 
would be a divergence from the path of the philosophic 
moralist to expose and refute them. To rob the Pos- 
sessor of heaven and earth is as impossible as to strike 
the incorporeal spirit, and it is scarcely less absurd to 
define the one imaginary crime than the other. 

Nevertheless, there is undeniably such a sin as sacri- 
lege, and it consists in this : the desecration of holy 
things. Externally considered, the ethical delinquency 
of such acts lies herein, that they are obstructions to 
the performance of man's religious duty of worship. 
The means which we or others possess for that purpose 
are thereby removed. It is not that the sacrilegist 
"robs" God of His Church — for the universe of suns 
is but the porch of His infinitude — but he takes from 
man his " house of prayer ;" and man cannot always 
pray equally in all places. Thus sacrilege is an offence 
against God, inasmuch as it is the placing of a stumbling- 
block, the addition of some new difficulty, or the sub- 



44 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



traction of some facility, in that path of approach to- 
wards Himself which it is His great design that all His 
creatures should tread. 

Considered with reference to the offender's own senti- 
ments, sacrilege has this guilt : that it evidences want 
of loving reverence towards God, in want of respect 
towards objects associated with His service. The prin- 
ciple in the human mind is fully recognised whereby 
all things animate and inanimate become endeared to us 
by association with beloved persons, and receive, as it 
were, the shadows of the sentiments we give to them. 
It has been the spring, not only of many of the tenderest 
passages of private life, but also of great historical 
events and institutions — of the Crusades and Moslem 
pilgrimages, and of the whole Christian and heathen 
relic-worship. And as this principle holds fully in 
religious matters, it is clear that we must manifest con- 
tempt towards God when we display it towards objects 
which are connected with Him. They are " consecrated' 9 
by the unchanging natural law of association of ideas. 
Of course it is not as directly an insult to God to commit 
such sacrilege as it is to commit blasphemy or perjury. 
The objects we misuse are only secondarily connected 
with religion ; their sanctity is a derived one, and must 
depend altogether on the fact and on the degree of their 
association with His worship. 

By viewing this crime thus, in its rational light, a 
great many difficulties ' are obviated respecting the 
nature of a consecrated thing. Beyond his Bible and 



SACRILEGE. 45 

his bishop-sanctified church and burial-ground, the 
Englishman is not a little at a loss to define what is an 
object which it would be sacrilege to treat contemptuously, 
or apply to profane uses. Now it becomes manifest that 
the crime of sacrilege is involved only in two cases — 
1st. When it deprives ourselves or others of the means 
of worship. 2ndly. When it proves want of reverence 
to Grod in want of reverence to objects associated in our 
minds with Him. The narrowest closet, the poorest 
melody, may be as much needed by some human soul 
for its prayers, as the grandest cathedral ever conse- 
crated by the pomp of a hierarchy, or the most exquisite 
Miserere ever sung by the papal choir. And to take 
the " poor man's lamb," his small and humble " means 
of grace," away from him, may be a greater sacrilege 
than ever Cromwell's troops committed in the proud 
fanes of England. Thus, however, we arrive at the 
discovery that sacrilege, instead of being a rare and 
almost unheard-of crime, against which it seemed super- 
fluous to guard ourselves, is, in fact, one continually 
committed by all classes. The ruffian who breaks into the 
church to steal the sacramental plate, he is not the sole 
sacrilegist amongst us. Even supposing that we have 
never interfered with the physical facilities offered to 
our fellows' worship, never kept them from services they 
desired to attend, never deprived them of opportunities 
which separate apartments, books, good companions, 
might give them, still which of us can say that in our 
assumption of knowledge and fastidious taste we have 



46 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



not desecrated to their minds, books, places, music, 
sermons, poetry, which were to them actual aids to 
devotion ? And to ourselves also, have not our irre- 
verent modes of speech and thought, our carelessness 
of the externals of private worship, deprived us of many 
a holy influence ? 



PERSECUTION. 



47 



SECTION VI. 

PERSECUTION, 

The crime just discussed of sacrilege has been com- 
monly denned to include the injury of persons (as well as 
things) consecrated to God. I consider that all injuries 
of persons which can be classed as religious offences will, 
with greater propriety, be ranked under the separate 
head of Persecution. 

The injuring of a man because he holds an office 
which the injurer's conscience admits to be sacred, or 
has done an act which he feels to be right, or upholds a 
faith he belieyes to be true — these are offences we cannot 
suppose haye eyer taken place. Two modes of this 
offence then are alone possible :— 

1st. Injuries done from some personal malice or 
interest, of which the religious character of the injured 
party is either made the excuse, or is not so sufficiently 
regarded as to form his protection. 

2nd. Injuries done from mistaken ideas of religious 
obligation, the injurer belieying himself called upon to 
punish the man who holds a faith he belieyes to be false, 
or performs actions he conceives to be impious. 

It cannot be doubted that a considerable number of 
the acts of persecution recorded and unrecorded in 



48 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



history would be placed, by any one who could see the 
hearts of the persecutors, in the category of injuries 
done through personal interest or malice, and falsely 
coloured by the pretence of religious zeal. In all great 
national persecutions these private feelings must have 
had considerable share in guiding both accusers and 
judges. The charge of heresy or of witchcraft was the 
easiest weapon for the destruction of a rival or a foe 
which interest could use, and the cruellest which malice 
could desire. It is superfluous to point out all the 
personal and social crimes, falsehood, injustice, and cruelty 
involved in such acts. Their religious offence also is 
patent, the insulting God by using the pretence of zeal 
for His service to cover a crime. 

Injuries which are not done on pretence of religion, 
but from which the religious character of the injured 
might have guarded him had it been duly regarded, are 
acts whose share of religious offence, over and above their 
social crime, seems to be on this wise : — All men are 
God's creatures, children of His love. Thus (as I shall 
show in speaking of social offences), whatsoever injury 
we do any man, it is an offence also to God as his 
Creator and Protector, as well as our Judge. Some men 
are in a more peculiar manner God's children. They 
are saints living visibly in the light of His smile, and 
imitating His goodness. Some of them are of the 
greatest service to mankind, assisting both by precept 
and example in the general virtue and religion. To 
injure such men is necessarily more closely to offend 



PERSECUTION. 



49 



God than to injure others ; and if we go so far as to take 
from such saints their lives or means of sjDiritual useful- 
ness, we commit a sacrilege more fatal in its results than 
the demolition of any temple made with mortal hands. 
Lastly, the guilt of such acts reaches its culmination 
when the most saintly and useful man is engaged in 
such acts as cannot fail to remind the injurer of his 
relation to Grod, and consequently of the religious offence 
he will incur by his crime. A murder would undoubtedly 
bear the added shade of sacrilege which should be com- 
mitted on a good man at his prayer, on a minister of 
religion striving to quell the rage of an insurrection 
with Divine lessons of peace. It is manifest, however, 
that these principles afford no shelter to the by-gone 
superstitions, which represent as sacrilegious the inflic- 
tion of deserved punishment on the priest or king whose 
outward consecration has neither made him a saint of 
God nor an auxiliary of the virtue of mankind. 

2nd. Persecution committed in sincerity, from a 
mistaken sense of religious duty, must always be ranked 
as a crime of error, and its guilt must be calculated by 
the sin involved originally in the reception of such error. 
The usual way in which persecutors have argued seems 
to be this : — The religious opinion which they persecute 
they have conceived to be not only false, but productive 
of mischievous results, temporal or eternal. To the 
Roman Proconsul the Christian was a rebel, a partisan 
and propagator of doctrines subversive of civil order. 
To the Papist the Protestant is a reprobate, a holder and 

D 



50 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



teacher of doctrines leading men to eternal damnation. 
The Roman punished the rebel on the usual principles 
of state policy, precisely as a military tribunal in our 
own times orders the execution of a mutineer, not con- 
cerning itself to hold the balance between crime and 
retribution, but simply adopting the readiest means at 
hand for preserving discipline. The Papist punished 
the Protestant on still stronger grounds. The mischief 
he strove to prevent was as much greater than the other 
as the perdition of souls is worse than the disturbance of 
public order : nay, he had further some actual show of 
justice ; viz., the retribution on a crime which he rated 
equal to high treason against God. 

If expediency, then, were to be admitted as the funda- 
mental principle of civil government, the modern 
Englishman would find it hard to define wherein lay 
the offence of the Pagan or Papist persecutor.* The 

* Unless, indeed, on the plea that their persecutions were not 
expedient, in which case the objector is compelled to admit the 
morality of those which actually extirpated the offence. Thus an 
exterminating persecution (like those of Charles IX. and Louis XIV., 
which saved France from Protestantism) would be moral, and only 
those less cruel and complete, immoral ! Again, it is sometimes said 
that persecutions are inexpedient because the 4 4 blood of the martyrs is 
the seed of the Church." But though everybody thinks this of the 
martyrs to what he deems truth, nobody pretends it holds good of the 
martyrs of error, at least with equal weight. We say, ' ' Magna est 
Veritas et prevalebit," but we do not think & falsehood can never be 
nipped in the bud. As each persecutor, then, necessarily thinks he is 
only trying to extirpate error, he is entitled to hope that the means of 
axe and halter may prove perfectly expedient for that purpose. 



PERSECUTION. 



51 



first acted precisely according to the received European 
mode of dealing with political rebels (allowing for the 
grosser cruelties of the earlier times). The second pos- 
sessed a justification which no moral system is qualified 
to confute. The existence of that eternal hell from 
which he sought to save the souls of the nations is a 
doctrine whose admission would terminate all rational 
ethical discussion. If such an abyss really yawned at 
our feet, it would be vain to urge any principle, even 
that of the eternal risrht itself, against anv conduct 
which promised to save ourselves or our fellows from 
the endless criminality of a reprobate immortality. To 
argue justly the absurd dilemma would be impossible. 
" Ought we to obey the law now, if by doing so we lose 
the power to obey it through all eternity ?" But, in 
fact, we could not even advance so far as to prove to a 
Romanist that the slaughter of men for heresy was an 
injustice and contravention of the law. Believing that 
G od will punish heresy with hell, he is driven to believe 
that, though his conscience may not condemn it, heresy 
is a crime, nay, a most heinous crime. Every apology 
for toleration may be met in the same way : " Your 
heresy must be a moral offence because God will punish 
it ; but even were it not so, and as such deserving of 
retribution, I am bound, in mercy to my fellows, to 
prevent, by every means in my power, the spread of a 
mischief so enormous as to place the case quite beyond 
the bounds of ordinary morality. " 

The truth is, that before we can rationally condemn 

d 2 



52 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



either Pagan or Papist persecutors, we must go back to 
the original principles of just governments, and must 
discard some political and theological errors nearly 
universal. We must put aside, once for all, that Medusa 
shield of fanaticism which turns to stone every anta- 
gonist, the hideous doctrine of hell ; and we must so 
define the duties of a state as to leave to every citizen 
the free exercise of any innoxious religion. Had the 
Roman state required of its subjects no more than a 
state has a right to demand, and punished nothing but 
what a state has a right to chastise, the Ten Persecutions 
woidd never have existed. 

The guilt, then, of persecution lies altogether higher up 
than is commonly understood. It is the adoption and 
maintenance of a false system of government, or the 
acceptance of a theologic dogma impiously derogatory 
to the Divine goodness. The Roman ought not to have 
sacrificed justice to expediency, and inflicted a tremendous 
penalty where there was no moral guilt, simply because 
it seemed to him that such was the interest of the state.* 

* It ought not to "be forgotten, however, as one great palliation of 
the Roman persecutors, that they had some plausible reasons for 
believing that the Christians were really guilty of hideous practices, 
and that the Church was simply a society of fanatics, no less morally 
depraved than politically dangerous. The absurd stories concerning 
the infant sacrifices and wholesale debaucheries said to have been 
practised in the Christian mysteries (which, unhappily, were rendered 
difficult of confutation by the secrecy of the nocturnal celebrations in 
the catacombs) — these stories, I say, were bandied from Catholic to 
heretic, and from heretic to Catholic, in a way which really afforded to 



PERSECUTION. 



53 



The Papist ought not to have believed the human testi- 
mony which asserted that Grod would burn his creature 
for ever in hell as a punishment for heresy. 

In a lesser way the offence of persecution is every day 
incurred by all those who treat differences in religious 
opinion as moral derelictions, and punish them by any 
of those thousand rods which society leaves in the hand 
of every man wherewith to vex his brother. Here, 
although objectively the injury done may be of very 
trifling nature, the subjective offence can have no such 
excuses as belong to the public persecutions of Roman 
or Papist. Public order is not maintained by domestic 
unkindness, nor is the damnation of souls to be pre- 
vented by the worrying of heretics. If we allow our 
religious sympathies and their evil antiparts of suspicion 
and dislike to distract us from absolute justice in our 
judgments of, and conduct towards, those around us, we 
are guilty of an offence against God. Nor is it merely 
that we risk the crime of doing injury to a man because 
he has been given a truer faith than our own, and thus 
" haply be found to war against Grod," who gave him 

the heathen some presumption of their truth. "A pagan magistrate," 
says Gibbon, "who possessed neither leisure nor abilities to discern 
the almost imperceptible line which divides the orthodox faith from 
heretical pravity, might easily have imagined that their mutual ani- 
mosity had extorted the discovery of their common guilt." (Decline, 
vol. i., four vol. edition, p. 312.) When Tertullian became a Monta- 
nist, he aspersed the morals of the Church which he had so resolutely 
defended. (Be Jejunis, c. xviL) 



54 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



that faith. This guilt each soul will confidently repu- 
diate, for the persecutor must needs believe his own 
creed the truth, and that of his victim an error. But 
the real crime, of which we may all be cognizant, is this : 
we neglect or contravene our social duty of conducing 
to our brother's happiness, on grounds which are osten- 
sibly religious, but are actually insults to God. And 
why are they so ? Because, as God is the kind and 
loving Father of that supposed heretic, because He 
requires us to imitate Himself in pouring ever the rain 
of mercies on the heads of all, we are precisely disobeying 
His will under the pretence of special zeal for His 
truth.* 

That such a remark as the above is not unnecessary 
will be recognised by every one who knows his own 
heart, and feels how inevitably we incline to depreciate 
the virtues and exaggerate the faults of those who differ 
from us in religious creed, and how difficult it is to pre- 
serve the true charity of cordial esteem, of kindliness 
and tenderness, towards those who stand outside our 
-household of faith." 

* This is not the doctrine of St. Cyril. "Abhor, therefore, the 
Gnostics, and flee from them. If he who attaches himself to a thief is 
punishable, what hope shall he have who offends against the Holy 
Ghost ? And abhor the Marcionites also. Let the Cataphrygians be 
thy abhorrence. Let us hate them who are worthy hatred. Let us 
also say unto God with all boldness concerning heretics, Do not I hate 
them, 0 Lord, that hate thee ?" &c, &c. — St. Cyril, Led. xvi. 



ATHEISM, 



55 



SECTION VII. 

ATHEISM, 

There seems, at first sight, an absurdity involved in 
ranking under the category of religious offences the 
disavowal of the cardinal fact on whose veracity the 
existence of any duty connected with religion must de- 
pend. If (as the atheist affirms) the existence of God 
be an intellectual problem insoluble by man, then it is 
clear that his assertion that such is the case must be 
without offence to any being whatsoever. And should 
he even err in this matter, and the existence of Grod It 
demonstrable to human reason, yet if his assertion be 
subjectively true (i.e., the veritable expression of his 
genuine conviction) , his error may plausibly be repre- 
sented as a purely intellectual mistake, and, as such, 
exonerated from all moral guilt. 

The whole ethical importance of this subject depends, 
I conceive, upon the answer which experience warrants 
us in making as to a point of fact. Is atheism, practi- 
cally speaking, as its adherents affirm, a matter of intel- 
lectual conviction only ? If it be so, purely and simply, 
then it is indeed absurd to attach to it any ethical offence 
whatever. But if, on the contrary; the human will has 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



a certain share of delinquency wheresoever man has 
failed to become conscious of the supreme righteous 
Will above him, then that share of delinquency must 
constitute the moral offence of atheism, and the universal 
s:nse of mankind stands justified in treating the rejec- 
tion of religion as sinful. It would lead far beyond the 
limits of this book to argue this matter of fact ; and he 
who has acquainted himself most intimately with the 
lives and writings of atheists will probably be diffident 
of asserting respecting any one of them that he, indi- 
vidually, has displayed moral pravity in his decision. 
Undoubtedly, in some cases, a pure loyalty to supposed 
truth has led men to quench their natural impulses to 
bAieve and to love, and the faithfulness with which 
they have obeyed those laws of personal and social duty, 
which are the laws of God, must close the lips of every 
just man who would be disposed to condemn their 
atheism as a crime.* Nevertheless, it remains for every 
one who finds himself verging towards such a conclusion, 
or already arrived at it, to solve for his own conscience 
the question on which his guilt or innocence depends. 
Even admitting, for argument's sake, that his denial of 
God is objective truth, yet if he have arrived at it by 
evil ways, if he have lost a sentiment all but universal 
in his race by means of the paralysis of conscience, then 
he must at least admit that his atheism is a most fearful 

* See, for example, George Jacob Holyoake, for whose life, and for a 
masterly review of this whole subject, 1 would refer the reader to 
Mod :rn Atheism, by Sophia D. Collet. Triibner, 1S55. 



ATHEISM. 



57 



test and symptom of the extremity of his moral disease. 
But, in truth, the assumption of the veracity of atheism 
on this hypothesis is absurd ; for if the delinquency of 
the will (i.e., the indulgence in the sinful desires of the 
lower nature) have, in any case, proved the cause of 
atheism, then it is an insult to the moral law to assume 
that that can be a truth to which its neglect has led the 
atheist. Of course the application of this test, of how 
we have arrived at our theological convictions, must 
always be of nice application, and open to error on the 
negative side. jS^evertheless, the connection is so intri- 
cate between the condition of the will and the action of 
the reason, the apprehension of truth is so dependent on 
the readiness with which we wait to obey that truth 
when discovered, that it may, in the vast majority of 
cases, be held the rule, what faith soever a man 

HAVE REACHED WHILE MORALLY RETROGRADING IS A 
LESS TRUE FAITH THAN HE WILL ATTAIN WHILE MORALLY 

progressing. A new creed, even if a lower one on the 
whole, may, and does commonly spur a man tempo- 
rarily to a stricter morality (probably because it presents 
along with its errors some one truth which his soul 
wanted) ; but, on the other hand, though the creed 
which makes him better may not be true, the creed 
which makes him ivorse must needs be altogether false 
and evil. 

I may further remark that there is great error in the 
notion which seems prevalent among liberal minds in 
our day, that atheism is to be considered always merely 

d 3 



58 



RELlGlOrS OFFENCES. 



as one form of religious error, often amply atoned by 
the honesty shown by the atheist in the avowal of his 
convictions. Let us test this false indulgence by the 
supposition of another case. A man says, "I have 
arrived at the conviction that morality is all a mistake. 
There is no such thing as right and wrong. It is all 
the same whether I am truthful or perfidious, chaste or 
profligate, benevolent or malignant. Justice is the in- 
vention of lawyers" Xow, it cannot be shown that 
this aneihicisfs convictions are fictitious. The logical 
demonstration of the existence of moral distinctions 
takes more for granted than the demonstration of the 
existence of God. It rests more exclusively on a con- 
sciousness which (like the religious) varies in the ratio of 
its cultivation. I believe that a man who has persisted in 
sin for years may very sincerely persuade himself that 
sin and virtue have no essential difference. AVhen his 
will is thoroughly asleep he can ignore its existence. 
This man, we will suppose, has the candour to own 
these convictions (though why he should be candid it is 
hard to say). Do we feel that our indulgence can be 
stretched so far as to count his heresy a venial one ? 
Would it not be, on the contrary, the token that he had 
reached the very zero of worthlessness ? 

If it be true (as I shall endeavour to prove hereafter) 
that genuine and original faith in God is but faith in 
goodness at its crystallizing point, and that, though it 
may be adopted or preserved traditionally or thought- 
lessly without such warmth of virtue, yet that there 



ATHEISM. 



59 



alone it is at once spontaneous and secure ; if this be 
true, then atheism must mark a declension below that 
standard, just as the above described anethicism would 
mark the lowest degree of moral descent attainable by a 
rational creature.* 

The share attributed to metaphysical subtleties in the 
causation of atheism is doubtless the source of much of 
the indulgence shown to it by those who have just gone 
far enough to perceive the difficulties of the subject 
viewed as a problem for philosophic demonstration. 
But religion is not a metaphysical demonstration. We 
do not arrive at it by any process of logic, though we 
may use processes of logic to ratify our intuitions. Not 
easily, then (though I will not deny that it be possible), 
do we lose our intuitions when our logic fails us. 
Through antagonism with our lower desires we gain 
full consciousness of our own righteous wills : through 
those wills we come in contact with the all-righteous 
will of God. If these wills be in full action, they can 
hardly fail to bring to our souls such a sense of God's 
existence as shall leave all our metaphysical difficulties 
quite on the outside of our lives, during the little space 
that may intervene before we find their solution. f There 

* " Injustice, like a cloud, hides the light of faith." — Proverbs 
of A li. 

f " Socrates. If thou wouldst experience what the wisdom, and 
what the love of God, render thyself deserving the communication of 
those Divine secrets which may not be penetrated by man, and are 
imparted to those alone who consult, and adore, and obey the Deity. 



60 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



are numberless tilings, even the existence of the material 
universe, or of the souls of our friends, which at the 
outset of our philosophy, and perhaps during all our 
lives, we are never able to prove — nay, every argument 
we can find lies against them. But do we, therefore, 
dash ourselves against a rock because we cannot refute 
Berkeley ? Do we renounce our friends because we 
cannot demonstrate they are not spectral illusions? 
Xo. The consciousness of the truth is strong enough to 
counteract all our logic, and to neutralize it altogether. 
We are ready to leap into the sea for that " illusion " of 
a friend just as readily as if there had never been a 
Pyrrho in the world. If, then, our consciousness of 
God be maintained at its true height by full exertion of 
our righteous will, all our metaphysical doubts will fall 
off powerless. We shall, as it were, keep hold on God 
even while our intellects may be employed in solving 
the problem of His existence. 

Again, the argument for the existence of a Supreme 
moral Will, drawn from the moral government which 
may be perceived overruling the destinies of nations 
and individuals, the rewards and punishments inflicted 
on us (altogether independently of our volitions) by 

Then shalt thou, my Aristodemus, understand that there is a Being 
whose eye pierceth through all nature, and whose ear is open to every 
sound, extended to all space, extending through all time, and whose 
bounty and care can know no other bounds than those fixed by His own 
creation." — Xenophon, Memorab. (Socrates' reply to the idle wish of 
Aristodemus that the Gods would make revelation to him of his duty. ) 



ATHEISM. 



61 



conscience, the moral guidance which every religious 
man may trace in the review of the events of his life — 
this argument, I say, points so directly and inevitably 
to God, that for any one to fail in reaching the conclu- 
sion seems to prove either that he is without the com- 
monest faculties of reasoning, or that he has shut out 
from his mind and heart those thoughts and feelings 
which must have conducted him to such results. If a 
man's own sense of justice be strong, he will have looked 
for it and found it in the past and present history of 
his race. If he have habitually obeyed the dictates of 
his conscience, it will have remained so tender that each 
good and evil action will have brought sensations of joy 
or pain, for which no account, save the will of his 
Creator, could possibly be given. " Let a man once feel 
the law of duty in his soul ; let him feel within him, as 
with articulate distinctness of a living voice, the absolute 
imperative 'Thou Shalt' and 'Thou Shalt Not ; ' let 
him feel that the only hell is the hell of wrong-doing ; 
and if that man does not believe a God, all history is 
false."* 

That atheists deny these things does not prove that 
the facts are not true to which the noblest human souls 
have unanimously borne testimony. It only proves that 
they find themselves driven to deny that "justice is 
sovereign of the world," as an indispensable preliminary 
to the denial that there is a God. But who made the 

* Robertson's Lectures, p. 71. 



62 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



souls by which, justice is recognised to be proof of God? 
How does the atheist know there can be no God, or, at 
least, that he cannot worship Him, unless He be just? 
Who is the author of that principle in his soul ? 

Paradoxical, then, as the statement may seem, there is 
a profound truth in the instinctive sense of mankind 
that atheism is an offence against religious duty. The 
reason is this : — Consciousness of God must, indeed, pre- 
cede religion, as the atheist urges, but it also actually 
precedes all those logical arguments wherein he finds 
objections to religion. If he had felt that consciousness 
clearly, as he would have done had it been evolved by 
virtue, then his objections would be practically power- 
less. He would still be religious, let his logical under- 
standing be never so perplexed.* 

* Kant has admirably proved that it must be on moral grounds that 
a true faith in God is alone to be obtained. He justly adds, ' ' This 
moral theology has the peculiar advantage, in contrast with speculative, 
theology, of leading inevitably to the conception of a sole, perfect, and 
rational First Cause, whereof speculative theology does not give us any 
indication on objective grounds. ... On the other hand, if we 
take our stand on moral unity as a necessary law of the universe, and 
from this point of view consider what is necessary to give this law 
adequate efficiency, and for us obligatory force, we must come to the 
conclusion that there is only One Supreme Will, which comprehends 
all these laws in itself. This Will must be omnipotent, that all nature 
and its relation to morality in the world may be subject to it ; 
omniscient, that it may have knowledge of the most secret feelings and 
their moral worth ; omnipresent, that it may be at hand to supply 
every necessity to which the highest weal of the world may give rise ; 
eternal, that this harmony of nature and liberty may never fail, &c . . 



ATHEISM. 



63 



Of course these observations can only apply to cases 
wherein tlie atheist's mind has its fair chance of deve- 

Henee, also, we find, in the history of human reason, that before the 
moral perceptions were sufficiently purified and determined . . . the 
knowledge of nature, and even a considerable amount of intellectual 
culture in many other sciences, could produce only rude and vague 
conceptions of the Deity, sometimes even admitting of an astonishing 
indifference with regard to this question altogether. But the more 
enlarged treatment of moral ideas which was rendered necessary by the 
extremely pure moral law of our religion awakened the interest, and 
thereby quickened the perceptions of reason in relation to this object. 
In this way, and without the help either of an extensive acquaintance 
with nature or of a reliable transcendental insight, a conception of the 
Divine Being was arrived at which we now hold to be the correct one, 
not because speculative reason convinces us of its correctness, but 
because it accords with the moral principles of reason. , ' — Kant's Kritik, 
" Transcendental Doctrine of Method." Chap. ii. Lect. ii. 

It must not be thought, however, that there is any one channel in 
which the streams of human thought can continuously flow without 
reaching at last that ocean of Deity. Physical and metaphysical 
sciences often seem to pass underground into sunless caverns of 
atheism ; but sooner or later, if they be followed patiently, they are 
found to rise upward again, and pour then floods more mightily than 
ever. But the grand difference between moral theology and all other 
theologies is this, that it begins with a God, nay, rather, with the God, 
the One Righteous Will of the universe, whose moral attributes alone 
constitute Him the God of moral agents. Other theologies reach Him 
at last, that is, reach a "Necessary Being," a " Creative Intelligence," 
whose moral attributes are finally evolved from the rest. Thus these 
other theologies do but corroborate the moral, and ratify to the intellect 
of man that which his consciousness had taught him at the outset. All 
philosophers must err who, like Ferrier, would make the summit of 
metaphysics "the basis of all religion." Alas for the miUions of 
our Father's sons and daughters if so it were ! But the bread of life 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES 



lopinent under the normal conditions of human educa- 
tion. A man who has been all his life sunk in bodily 
want and mental darkness — a man who has breathed 
from infancy an atmosphere of blasphemy and pollution 
— a man whose thought of God has been inextricably 
associated with the cruelties and injustice attributed to 
His name by superstition — in none of these men can 
atheism be an offence ; and rarely can it belong to man 
to decide, of any atheist, that under one or other of 
these categories ( especially the last) he cannot claim to 
stand and be acquitted. 

grows in every field, and not alone in the half-doz-rii hot-houses of 
philosophy. 

See, however, the very interesting evolution of Theism from meta- 
physics in the Institutes, Prop. xi. 



PANTHEISM. 



65 



SECTION VIII. 

PANTHEISM. 

Pantheism, in any sense in which it can constitute a 
religious offence, is the adoption of a theology which 
disowns the moral attributes of God, by denying such 
personality in the Deity as affords a ground for those 
attributes ; thereby withdrawing from Gfod that which 
constitutes His special claim to the reverence of moral 
agents, and depriving morality of all assistance from 
religion. "The All of Things is God " is a formula 
within whose limits the purest ethical religion, and a 
creed morally tantamount to atheism, may both subsist ; 
and it is needful thoroughly to define how far the pan- 
theist retains or excludes that moral idea of God which, 
as we have said,* is necessary to constitute any senti- 
ment religious, before we attempt to class his creed 
among those involving any moral delinquency. All that 
has been said in the preceding section regarding the pos- 
sible guilt of atheism applies, of course, equally to such 
unmoral pantheism as a man may have reached through 
the neglect of a moral religion. In a succeeding sectionf 
I shall notice the manner in which an extreme love of 
the Beautiful, when unaccompanied by a still stronger love 
of the Good, tends to the production of this form of reli- 
gious error. Doubtless by many other roads the neglect 
of the moral side of religion leads to the same result. 
* Page 2. + Chap. iv. Sect. ii. 



66 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



SECTION IX. 

POLYTHEISM. 

It is not in the earlier stages of human progress that 
any guilt can attach to the purely intellectual error of 
polytheism. Further advance, however, in the various 
mental and physical sciences elucidatory of theology 
modifies the exculpation of ignorance. There must be 
a degree of guilt incurred by a man, when his reason 
and understanding have deductively and inductively de- 
monstrated the existence of one sole infinite God, when 
his intuition and his logic alike call upon him to worship 
that One, and forbid him, by every protest they can 
enter, to believe that the attributes of Deity can be com- 
municable or divided, when, under these circumstances, 
he bows tamely to the traditions of darker ages, when 
he yields to the fond propensity of weakness to exagge- 
rate hero-reverence into hero-worship, and consents to 
offer to a second or a third, or a thousandth, the honour 
and the gratitude he owes to the first and only God. 



IDOLATRY. 



67 



SECTION X. 

IDOLATRY. 

To arrive at any philosophical definition of the much- 
misunderstood offence of idolatry it will be needful to 
analyze, as accurately as possible, the difference between 
the acts and sentiments properly addressed to God, and 
those rightly given to any other being. 

It is on His moral attributes that (rod founds His claim 
to the allegiance of rational creatures. An all-powerful, 
omniscient evil spirit could inspire in souls, constituted 
as God has made ours, only reprobation and abhorrence. 
Thus, in investigating the accurate definition of religious 
acts and sentiments, we must confine ourselves to the 
moral difference between God and all creatures. His 
incorporeality, omnipresence, &c, are not directly in- 
volved in the question ; and to make the offence of 
idolatry turn on mistakes in these matters is to ignore 
the substance of religion while attending to its accidents. 
These may and will modify our idea of the substance. 
"When the mind is clearly directed to the subject, it dis- 
covers that it is impossible even to imagine a corporeal, 
and consequently limited Being, possessed of infinite 



68 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



attributes of any kind.* Therefore the imaging of God 
in bodily form involves as its result the loss of the abso- 
lute moral ideal. But it is not because it thus misre- 
presents His ineorporeality, but because it entails the 
misrepresentation of His moral nature, that idolatry is 
a religious offence. 

What is precisely this absolute moral ideal ? 

It is holiness, properly so called ; the infinite imper- 
sonation of the whole eternal right ; the absolute freedom 
from all the weaknesses and limitations of other beings. 
In virtue of this holiness God claims from us that 
peculiar homage which alone confers on our sense of 
dependence a religious nature ; namely, moral allegiance. 
As the absolute impersonation of the law His authority 
is co-ordinate, nay, identical with it. He is our moral 
King, the liege Lord under whom our own moral natures 
place us for ever as subjects. 

All other beings in the universe, as they cannot be 
infinite, are necessarily finite — there is in their moral 
natures some limitation, some weakness. Virtue, then, 
or the finite impersonation of the right, is the highest 
moral status to which they can attain — a status, be it 
remembered, which is for ever shifting, through the in- 
finite degrees of which it is susceptible. 

Now, this virtue manifestly cannot claim the same 
sort of homage which belongs of right to the holiness of 
God. We cannot owe to the virtuous being allegiance. 

* (i No one infinite attribute is compatible with any finite attribute ; 
that is certain." — Ferrier's Scottish Philosophy, p. 37. 



IDOLATRY. 



69 



His authority can only, in any case, extend within the 
limits of his virtue, nor can he claim to stretch it at all 
over us, unless under special conditions and particular 
circumstances. There is nothing in our moral nature 
and in his out of which the relation of subject and king 
necessarily arises, as it does in those of man and God. 
The homage, then, due to the most virtuous being in the 
universe differs not in degree only (as seems commonly 
supposed), but altogether in kind, from that owed to 
God. The one, in short, is fealty to the Being whose 
every command we are bound to obey, and whose per- 
fections we adore, but can never attain ; the other is 
honour to the fellow- subject who has reached a grade 
higher than we at present have gained. 

It is obvious that to confound these two distinct rela- 
tions is to infringe seriously on the veracity of both. 
Were we only to honour God as if He were nothing 
more than virtuous, the union between morality and 
religion woidd be destroyed ; we could no longer regard 
our duties as Divine commands — the commands of a 
Being whose will is co-ordinate with the whole moral 
law. On the other hand, if we pay fealty and adoration 
to a virtuous fellow-subject, we are guilty of a species 
of treason against God ; we divide our allegiance 
between a rightful and an unrightful sovereign, and by 
so doing detract from the worship we owe to our true 
Lord. 

Herein, then, lies the offence of idolatry, that the 
fealty and adoration due only to the Perfect Being are 



70 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



paid to beings contemplated as not endowed with such 
perfection.* 

Now, this offence of idolatry takes various forms. It 
may exist in the ascription to the supreme Grod of moral 
attributes recognised as imperfect, or of moral charac- 
teristics belonging to finite virtue and not to infinite 
holiness (e.g., the conquest of lower desires) . Or it may 
represent the supreme physically finite (e.g., corporeal), 
from whence, as I have shown, the notion of His moral 
finiteness and imperfection follows as a corollary. Lastly, 
it may ostensibly leave to the supreme God His moral 
and physical perfection, but by, presenting other and 
morally imperfect beings as co-claimants of fealty and 
adoration, detract directly and indirectly from the homage 
we owe to Him.f 

* " Why should we pay obedience to any man who was a mortal 
like ourselves, and was subject to anger, and lust, and pain, and joy ? 
For if this mortal should teach knowledge and thanksgiving, we have 
been already made acquainted with these by the assistance of our own 
understandings ; and if he should teach what is contrary to reason, this 
would alone be a sufficient proof of his falsehood. For reason assures 
us that the Creator of the world is wise, and a wise Being would not 
prescribe to the created any worship which would appear to their rea- 
sons to be evil, since what appears evil cannot remain permanent. ISTow, 
all religions are founded on circumstances which must be considered 
evil, such as believing in the conversations of God, the incarnation of 
the incorporeal essence, and His reascension into heaven in a human 
body. ... It is evident that for remembering and praising God 
no medium nor particular place is at all requisite." — TJie Dabistan, by 
the Emperor Acbar. 

+ A very curious investigation it would be to trace how far idolatry 



IDOLATRY. 



The two last forms of idolatry, though only indirectly 
involving religions offence, are so mnch more obvious 
and definite than the others that they have given their 
proper appellation to the sin itself. A few observations 
on the palliations and tendencies of this offence are all 
that need be here attempted. 

has mingled in all the great forms of human religion. In the earlier 
Judaism, nobly as material idols were denounced, we cannot acquit of 
the encouragement of a mental e?8a>\ov, a creed containing such myths 
as those in Gen. iii., xviii., xxxii. ; Exod. xxiv., xxxiii. ; and Ezek. 
i., viii. A God who "walks in a garden in the cool of the day ;" 
who eats and drinks with men, and permits His feet to be washed ' 1 to 
comfort His heart ;" who shows His "back parts, " though not his face ; 
who has the semblance "like the body of heaven in His clearness ;" 
who is "the colour of amber, with loins having the appearance of fire ; " 
who is "to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone" — such a God 
is quite as difficult to identify with the Infinite Holy Spirit as any marble 
"likeness " coidd have made Him. The Egyptian, Syrian, Greek, 
Eoman, Scandinavian, and Hindoo religions are all unmistakably 
idolatrous. The Zoroastrian emblem of fire for Ormusd, and the Druid 
emblem of an oak for Hesus, seem considerably more elevated, and, in 
fact, hardly to be counted as involving offence, inasmuch as the type 
by no means professed to offer a semblance of God, or to convey any 
idea of a finite form. Buddhism stands in singular relation to Chris- 
tianity in many ways. These two great creeds, which probably con- 
tain within their folds the two largest sections of the human family, 
have each placed as the special object of their worship a man elevated 
to Deity — Goutama and Christ — both miraculously born, but still in- 
heritors of human nature ; both teachers of righteousness, and adored 
unquestionably from the influence their moral elevation exercised on 
the minds of men : these are their resemblances. Their difference, 
philosophically speaking, lies in this : that Christ is the ideal of virtue, 
the finite impersonation of right, in a soul exposed to trial and shut in 
by all the limitations of creaturehood, and yet absolutely victorious 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES 



It is undoubtedly the most natural of all theological 
errors, to imagine that that Will which we recognise as 
the Supreme Will of the universe should resemble all 
other wills with which we are acquainted, and be in 
some similar manner enshrined in a material body. 
Probably no religion can ever have sprung up indi- 
genously in a nation without passing through a stage 
of anthropomorphism. Further, such conceptions of 
the Divine nature have the additional attraction of 
seeming to present a firmer hold for our religious affec- 
tions. The more we represent God to ourselves in the 
likeness of a man, the more tangible points seem offered 
for our sympathy, admiration, and love. Xo one 

over every temptation. Goutania, on the contrary, seems to confound 
in his own person the moral attributes of God and man. There is no 
Infinite Creator or Father above him. He has surpassed Mahabrahm, 
and before his human birth he was a god. Born the son of a rajah, 
ignorant, till maturity, of pain and death, he attained his dignity of 
Buddha solely, as it would seem, by solitary, contemplative asceticism. 
'Whether this name of Buddha signifies "^Vise," or, as others interpret 
it properly, ' ' Holy, " it would seem that the essential idea connected 
with Goutarna is far more the divine repose of absolute sanctity ^at- 
tempted to be represented in his statues^, than the vinuc victorious 
over agony eternized in the crucifix of Christ. 

Perhaps our present knowledge of Buddhism hardly warrants the 
above parallel ; and in the innumerable discrepant statements made 
concerning its doctrines there are some which assert that suffering 
formed the step to Goutama's deity. (See A Description of the Buddh isi 
Doctrine, sent, in 1766, to the Governor of Ceylon, by the High Priest 
of the Temple of Mulgirri Galle, trans, in British Museum. But see. 
per contra, the Buddha Guadmu's doctrine, by Modeliar Rajah Pax-, 
in the Maluticanse, p. 161.) 



IDOLATRY. 



73 



wonders at the Swedenborgian reaction against spirit- 
ualism, any more than at the lamentations of Serapion 
for his embodied Deity.* 

Nevertheless, it is but a specious illusion which makes 
us thus suppose we could love God better if we believed 
Him corporeal. It is the living soul itself, the righteous 
will, which we love in our human friends. Their bodies 
are dear to us only for the sake of the unseen, intangible 
reality of which the flesh is the clothing and the index, 
Take away the fairest of earthly forms, and suppose the 
spirit within still able to commune with our own, and 
impress it equally vividly with its existence and love ; 
our affections, so far from being impaired, would oniy 
rise to still greater heights of purity and fervour. 
Thus, in the endless oscillations of the human soul 
between pantheism and anthropomorphism, though the 
first has much to lose, the second has nothing to gain, 
over the most philosophic and spiritual theism. 

The sin of idolatry possesses, then, no excuse in the 
real constitution of the human heart. On the contrary, 
it distinctly tends to reduce the power of the religious 
sentiment. AVhat soever it gains in human sympathy, 
that it loses in the awful reverence, the trustful de- 
pendence which belong to Divine religion. 

I may here remark, that much of the Protestant 
reprobation of Romish image-worship is singularly 

* "Heu me miserum ! Tulerunt a me Deum meum, et quern nunc 
teneam non habeo, vel quern adorem aut interpellem jam nescio."— ~ 
Gibbon, chap, xlvii. 

E 



74 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



illogical. The idolatry of the Papist is chiefly directed 
to pictures and statues of Christ and the Virgin. In 
the latter case, polytheism is the offence involved, and 
not the particular mode of worshipping a fictitious deity. 
In the case of Christ, the Trinitarian Protestant believes 
that a God was actually incarnated in material form, 
and consequently he himself worships him (I assume) 
nearly always under the mental image of the " Man of 
Nazareth." Certainly he would deem it no duty to 
endeavour to dissipate any such Eidolon into an incor- 
poreal Deity ; but, on the contrary, would probably 
congratulate himself on the vivacity with which he was 
able to picture the affecting countenance of the Saviour. 
If such mental imagery be lawful, wherein can lie the 
offence of perpetuating it in stone and canvas to waken 
the same lawful feelings in all beholders ? 

A human face expressing any virtue, such as courage, 
resignation, gratitude, benevolence, is actually a lesson 
of that virtue, not only of wider comprehension than 
any which written language is suited to convey, but 
also possessing far transcending power of inspiration. 
And why ? Because the human soul which obeys the 
right becomes the finite impersonation of it, even as 
God is the infinite impersonation of all right ; and it is 
the nature of the body to serve as an index of the soul, 
and " show through the alabaster the lamp within." 
When we see a human countenance radiant with love, 
glorified in adoration, we behold those blessed things 
shining through their veil of flesh, or rather moulding 



IDOLATRY. 



that flesh, into a form most mystically embodying them- 
selves. In raising the minds of the ignorant outcasts 
of society, next to a living righteous man or woman 
moving and spreading love among them, there is no 
lesson equal to a picture which delineates the face of 
such a person idealized and perfected.* "Words (it 
cannot too often be repeated) have no absolute meaning, 
and can only signify to any individual what he is able 
to convey into them from the results of his own inward 
life."f The abstract names of goodness and wickedness, 
honesty and dishonesty, chastity and profligacy, are 
mere sounds to those unhappy beings who have passed 
their whole lives steeped to the lips in the dread cess- 
pools of a great city's vice. Even to the educated, and 
those who are not practically ignorant of the deep mean- 
ing of moral truths, how often it occurs to discover all 
at once how words and formulae they have used for years 
have failed, till that happy moment, to bear to their 
minds any sort of reality ! Now, just as a virtue acted 
out before our eyes, as a loving, forgiving, truthful deed, 
will speak to us and claim our veneration long before an 
abstract, verbal definition of the virtue will so impress 
us, in like manner, and sometimes hardly in a lesser 
degree, a picture will do the same. I cannot attempt 
here to discuss the philosophy of the Beautiful, or show 

* See the accounts of soft feelings first manifested by juvenile criminals 
at the sight of religious pictures. — Miss Carpenter's Refonnatory 
Schools, p. 45. 

t Morell's Psychology, p. 197. 

E 2 



76 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



how it co-acts with the Good. It is enough to notice a 
fact which none will dispute. The heroic patience of a 
St. Sebastian, the divine tenderness of the Virgin, the 
rapt adoration of St. Cecilia, the heart-rent repentance 
of Magdalen, the resignation of Christ, these are lessons 
in which the painters of Christendom have taught as 
many souls, and taught them better than ever the priests 
have done from all their pulpits. 

To condemn an engine to which God has given such 
beneficent power as this, it must be shown that the 
mischiefs it works surpass the benefits. But what, then, 
are the mischiefs which the iconoclast would obviate ? 
It is not the abstract worship of the Virgin and saints. 
That is another matter from idolatry. It is the offence 
of polytheism, and may be carried on perfectly well 
without any statues or pictures whatever. It is not the 
attributing a human form, and consequently the limita- 
tions of humanity, to beings receiving Divine honours. 
This he does himself, and defends unhesitatingly in the 
case of Christ. There remains nothing for him to con- 
demn unless he maintain that the image-worshipper 
actually transfers to the material stone or canvas his 
adoration of the invisible saint or Saviour it represents. 
Now, it may be reasonably doubted whether the worship 
of stocks and stones as stocks and stones has ever existed, 
even among the veriest fetichist savages in Africa or 
Polynesia. The notion that some unseen potentate lurks 
in the block, and may be there addressed and conciliated, 
seems to be the very lowest idolatry to which man ever 



IDOLATRY. 



77 



descends.* When an image or picture, however rude, 
is attempted, it may be understood either to be an emblem 
of the attributes of the Deity (like the half-animal forms 
of Egypt and the many-headed, many-handed figures 
of India), or else to be intended as a portrait of what the 
god, when visible to mortal eyes, resembled. If Pro- 
testants imagine that an Athenian of the days of Pericles 
believed any one of the three Minervas on his Acropolis 
to be actually the goddess herself, wooden, marble, or 
chryselephantine, they are as absurdly mistaken as if 
they believe that other " virgin queen of heaven " is 
now worshipped by two -thirds of Christendom as com- 
posed of Raphael's pigments and canvas. f Superfluous 
it doubtless is to refute an error so gross as this, yet it 
is well, in all discussions on idolatry, to keep clearly in 
view wherein the offence thereof really lies, lest, while 

* Iambliclms indeed especially asserts that the image is only ex- 
ternally enlightened and adorned by the divinity, and asks if a man he 
not ashamed to introduce the idea of circumscription of a corporeal 
form into the notion of Deity. — See lamblichus an the Mysteries, c. ix, 
+ "What temple by a skilful builder reared 
Can in the circuit of its walls contain 
The person of a God ?" — Eueip. Frag. 
1 1 Canst thou believe the vast eternal Mind 
Was e'er to syrts and Libyan wastes confined ? 
Is there a place which God would call His own 
Before a virtuous soul, His Spirit's noblest throne ? 
Why seek we further ? Lo ! above, around, 
Where'er thou gazest, there may God be found, 
And prayer from every land is by His blessing crowned.' 5 

Lttcan, — Pharsalia, b. 9= 



78 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



condemning the vast majority of our race for a sin no 
man ever committed, we fail to note that in which we 
may be falling at the same moment. 

The only religion which can unite with pure morality 
is the worship of an absolutely holy being. No being 
can be absolutely holy unless he be Infinite. No cor- 
poreal being can be infinite. To worship, then, a being 
whom we believe to be corporeal is not (in so far as the 
rigid science of the case can be applied) to worship an 
absolutely Holy Being — i.e. God. Our religion, such 
as it is, may be exonerated by morality as involuntarily 
false, but it cannot be sanctioned by it, or accurately 
and perfectly united with it. 

Where this error thus exists, and G<pd is not wor- 
shipped as absolutely holy, it matters nothing at all, 
except as it affects the degree of distinctness in the 
error, whether any image or picture be used to represent 
the supposed Finite Deity. 

Where, on the other hand, true worship and allegiance 
are paid alone to the absolutely Holy Grod, and the 
broad line drawn between such fealty to our king, and 
the esteem due to our fellow-subjects, then no possible 
offence, but great benefit, can be obtained by imaging 
that virtue which in those fellow- subjects we esteem, 
and conveying its glory to our souls by every means 
within the resources of art. 



DEMONS OLATRY. 



79 



SECTION XI. 

DEMONOLATRY, 

The distinction between idolatry and demonolatry is 
this : that while idolatry worships an imperfectly 
righteous Grod, a being whose finite nature precludes 
infinite holiness, demonolatry worships a being not 
righteous at all, and whose nature is recognised as not 
merely falling short of the moral law, but as opposed to 
it. Religion and morality are here not merely disse- 
vered as in idolatry, but pitched directly against one 
another. It is needless to point out the immense offence, 
amounting to entire dereliction from duty, involved in 
any conscious act of demonolatry. There is always 
some truth at the bottom of any great popular senti- 
ment, and it may be believed that the persecution of 
witchcraft, dark and bloody chapter as it is in human 
history, may not be without some palliation in the intui- 
tive consciousness of men, that if a rational being were 
to renounce the worship of a beneficent deity for that of 
a maleficent one, his crime would be of mortal magni- 
tude. Whether such maleficent deity actually existed 
or accepted the demonolatrous worship, is a question 
morally unimportant in determining his guilt. 

Two forms of demonolatry are possible and extant. 



80 



RELIGIOITS OFFENCES. 



1st. The first consists in paying homage to one or 
more beings ostensibly evil, and believed to oppose the 
supreme good God. Yezidism, with sorcery and witch- 
craft (wherever the latter were not conscious impos- 
tures), are the patent instances of this offence. 

2nd. The second consists in attributing to a supreme 
and nominally good God, actions and sentiments which 
actually are evil, though decorated by specious titles. 
The worship of Jupiter, who was styled " Optimus 
Maximus," but whose supposed actions were cruel, vin- 
dictive, and impure, entailed obviously this form of 
demonolatry. 

It is of far less consequence to us, however, to dis- 
cover what ancient creeds involved religious offence, 
than to note how far opinions, even now commonly 
received in Christendom, may not entail the very guilt 
for which we condemn them. Our interest is with the 
question, Does not the acceptance of such a doctrine as 
the existence of a devil, and the attribution to him of 
such powers as excite our fears, involve a modified 
degree of the guilt of demonolatry ? Are not such fears 
and belief in his successful opposition to God's designs 
a species of worship, a Dulia if not a Latvia derogating 
from the claims of the good God to infinite trust and 
absolute reliance on His solipotence ? Doubtless, it 
would shock those many excellent persons who lay 
immense stress on the belief in a personal devil, to 
think that by doing so they are paying to another the 
homage due to God alone. But the line between such 



DEMONOLATRY. 



81 



fear as they give to Satan, and such other fear as they 
most especially deem part of the honour owed to God, is 
altogether evanescent and undistinguishable. When 
we find the precept of Christ, to "fear him who is able 
to destroy both soul and body in hell," interpreted by 
one divine* as a recommendation to fear the devil, and 
by another as an exhortation to fear God, we cannot 
deny that in a religion which inculcates such fear, it is 
sufficiently perilous to pure monotheism to admit the 
existence of a "ghostly enemy." 

"When the ungodly curseth Satan," says the son of 
Sirach, "he curseth his own soul." A true theist knows 
that his sins are all his own ; he reproaches not an im- 
aginary devil but his own weakness for their perpetra- 
tion, and he places absolute trust in God's will and 
power to bring about at last that end of virtue for which 
he made him. But he who believes that whenever he 
breaks the law, there is a personal tempter seducing 
him by quasi- godlike spiritual influences, and that this 
tempter has succeeded, and shall while the world lasts 
succeed, in enticing millions to their everlasting perdi- 
tion—how can he rightly take on himself the whole 
weight of his transgressions, how can he lean with 
absolute trust on God ?f Take it how he will, shuffle as 
he may between God's "permission" and His "will," 
it remains that a God in ivhose universe there is a devil 

* Maurice's Theological Essays. 

+ Ipse Diabolus gaudet cum accusatur vult ut a te ferat crimina- 
tionem. etna tu perdas confessionem. — S, Aug. Semi, xx, 

E 3 



82 



RELIGIOUS OFFENCES. 



and a deviVs hell, is not a perfect God, or one whose 
power and will we may absolutely trust, and whose 
justice and goodness we may absolutely adore. 

All that is deducted from God's power by this doc- 
trine is given necessarily to a devil, and precisely in the 
same ratio must the creed inclusive of it be held to in- 
volve the guilt of demonolatry. 

And for the second form of this offence, is there 
nothing in the Calvinist's creed that " attributes to a 
supreme and nominally good God, actions and senti- 
ments which are evil, though decorated by specious 
titles ?" If an action or sentiment be not what we call 
" right," it is not right at all, but, according to the laws 
of language, must be called wrong ; precisely as a line 
which, if it be not what we call " straight," must, 
by the laws of language, be called curved or crooked. 
The righteousness of God must be what we call right- 
eousness ; i. e., that character adorable and venerable 
which we designate by the word, and which our Creator 
(whoever he be) has made it our nature to adore and 
venerate, while we despise and abhor its opposite. No- 
thing, then, can be more monstrous than the practice of 
attributing to God acts and sentiments which depart 
altogether from our idea of right, and then justifying 
the blasphemy by the odious scholastic doctrine of an 
" Occulta Justitia," different from natural justice, yet 
not the less to be revered. The admission of a doctrine 
like this is tantamount to the destruction of all true 
religion, whose root is veneration for the moral perfec- 



DEMONOLATRY. 



83 



tion of God. If this perfection involve acts and senti- 
ments which our hearts do not, and cannot from their 
very natures venerate, but, on the contrary, despise and 
abhor, then there is an utter end of all religion for 
beings so constituted. 

But if an " Occulta Justitia " cannot for a moment be 
admitted to cover ascriptions of unrighteous acts and 
sentiments to the Deity, then it follows that every such 
ascription involves the guilt of the second form of de- 
monolatry. Whoever affirms that Grod has at any time 
done anything which in his own heart he cannot justify, 
he is guilty of this sin. 

Well said Malebranche: " II faut aimer TEtre infini- 
ment parfait, et non pas un fantome ^pouvantable, un 
Dieu injuste, absolu puissant, mais sans bonte et sans 
sagesse. S'il y avait un tel Dieu, le vrai Dieu nous 
defendrait de Tadorer et de 1' aimer. II y a peut-etre 
plus de danger d'offenser Dieu lorsqu'on lui donne une 
forme si horrible que de mepriser ce fantome,"* 



* Traite de la Morale, c. viii. 



CHAPTER III. 

RELIGIOUS FAULTS. 



SECTION I. 

THANKLESSNESS. 

In Social Ethics it is universally admitted that there is 
a double dereliction from the law of love involved in 
Ingratitude. There is in the nature of things an obli- 
gation on all rational free agents to testify special bene- 
volence towards those who have already displayed it 
towards themselves. The principle of Religious duty 
by which the fault of Thanklessness towards God stands 
morally condemned differs from the social principle 
only in this, that none of the palliations of human 
ingratitude can be admitted, and that every enhance- 
ment possible must belong to its guilt. We are bound 
to love God for His perfect goodness, and we are bound 
specially to love Him for His unnumbered benefits 
bestowed on ourselves. No human benefactor can be 
equally love-worthy, nor can his benefits be of com- 
parable magnitude. 



THANKLESSNESS. 



85 



In the succeeding chapter (Section I.), I shall endea- 
vour to set forth at some length the grounds of that 
Duty of Thanksgiving from which this fault is the 
obvious dereliction, and by the imperativeness of whose 
obligation its amount of guilt is determined. 



86 



RELIGIOUS FAULTS, 



SECTION II. 

IRREVERENCE. 

Reverence for the moral attributes of God is the nucleus 
of religion. Between that Duty of Adoration, which 
embodies such reverence, and the opposite Offences of 
Blasphemy and Sacrilege, there lies the negative Fault 
of Irreverence. It consists in this : that the goodness 
and justice of God are either forgotten and disregarded, 
or remembered with no fitting sentiments of veneration 
or actions of homage ; that the things associated with 
religion derive thence no sanctity, and are treated with 
no tenderness. 

In thus withholding from God the debt which, as 
moral agents, we owe to the Supreme Holiness, we of 
course incur the guilt of a religious delinquency pro- 
portioned to the exalted rank of that duty in which we 
fail. 

It is, however, a matter of no easy decision to mark 
the point whereto the natural principle of association of 
ideas ought to carry us in affixing reverence to things 
connected with religion. Many causes have contributed 
to the practice of attaching to objects a sanctity quite 
disproportionate with their real relation to religion. 
Besides the arts naturally employed by a sacerdotal 



XKREVEKENCE. 



87 



order to magnify themselves and everything connected 
with their office, and besides the natural gravitation of 
the human mind from the spiritual to the material, two 
other reasons are obvious to every reader of history why 
such excess of claims should be advanced in our day for 
the sanctity of the two greatest of these " idols of the 
theatre." There is a Book so full of wisdom, grandeur, 
piety, that all other books sink in comparison with it. 
The great souls of the Hebrews, rising almost from the 
first from the vantage-ground of the purest of the early 
monotheisms, fulfilled most perfectly the conditions under 
which inspiration is granted to man. The literature 
which they have bequeathed is the noblest heirloom of 
the human race. But as the child deems his father's 
knowledge infinite because it far exceeds his own, so 
have men still further exaggerated the marvellous 
wisdom of the Bible. From the Greatest of Books it 
came to be deemed a book altogether sui generis and 
alone. It w x as not the " large sheaf" in the harvest of 
human thought, it was bread-corn of heaven, sent 
miraculously to a sterile and famishing earth. But still 
higher have risen the Bible's claims since the days 
when the far-seeing pilots of the Reformation left the 
old ship of the Papacy to settle down slowly into the 
ocean of time, and looked around anxiously to find 
whereto they might anchor the new-launched boats 
which tossed about so wildly under " every wind of 
doctrine." There was but one ground near, and into it 
they drove their grapnels. " The Bible, the Bible only, 



88 



RELIGIOUS FAULTS. 



is the religion of Protestants." But lo ! the deep divers 
of modern criticism have shown that the old anchorage 
of Luther and Calvin is, after all, but shifting sand, 
and ere our chains are dragged too far our new pilots 
look ahead, and cry, " Behold the Church ! Let us take 
shelter in the safe harbour beneath its holy walls." 

It may not be ! That semblance of a Church is but a 
Fata Morgana after all ; and no devices of man will 
give to it material substance or open out a haven beneath, 
wherein the storms of doubt may not make shipwreck of 
our souls. 

One believer may inspire a million more, but a million 
of unbelievers will never make one believer. The dead 
soldiers on a battle-field will form no army, even if 
found in strictest uniform. Festivals and sacraments, 
rubrics, and articles, richly endowed hierarchies and 
splendid fanes, cannot infuse the vital spirit into a 
Church. Nay, if the life be departed, such outward 
vestments show ghastlily, like the gorgeous robes on a 
dead Greek bishop, carried rocking on his throne 
through the busy streets, and offering to living men 
the mock-benediction of his stiffened hand. Either the 
Church of England is a true Church, " a congregation of 
faithful souls," and then the faith of each soul is its 
own salvation ; or it is a mere effigy of what a Church 
ought to be, and will never support the weight of a 
soul burdened with a doubt. 

Neither Bible nor Church can afford a final resting- 
place for the soul. Both are venerable, rightly under- 



IRREVERENCE. 



89 



stood. Neither have a right to the blind unreasoning 
homage which has been claimed for them. Nothing 
can be more unwarrantable than the attempt to force us 
to revere, as a Divine Oracle on which all our conduct 
and all our hopes must depend, a Book, and every sen- 
tence in a Book, the evidence of whose authenticity 
would be insufficient to establish our claims to the 
smallest heritage disputed in an English court of justice, 
Nothing can be more puerile than the attempt to elevate 
the trifling details of a cultus into matters of vital im- 
portance, while the spiritual earnestness, which alone 
can make worship real, receives comparatively small 
attention. To hear some divines talk, we should be 
tempted to believe that such things as actual sin, pro- 
fligacy, dishonesty, drunkenness, and impiety, were 
things unheard of in a Christian land, and that the 
great concern of our pastors was to intone the appointed 
prayers with accuracy, and to compel the congregation 
to turn their faces to the east. Another party are 
equally intent to stir heaven and earth to make one 
proselyte ; but when we ask to what is he converted, we 
find it is to reading the Bible and adopting the pass- 
words of " depravity " and "salvation," not to becoming 
a manly and virtuous human being. Who would dream 
that our great army of souls is every hour in fierce war- 
fare with our deadly foe of sin, and that the half of us 
are sluggards sleeping at our posts, or traitors desert- 
ing to the enemy, w T hile all the time our leaders do but 
exhort us to a little greater accuracy of drill ? 



90 



RELIGIOUS FAULTS. 



For those who push the claims of reverence to every 
article of Church furniture, every page of either Testa- 
ment, this answer must suffice '.—Proportion must be 
observed in all our sentiments. If we adore the One 
Great God of heaven so that we name Him only with 
heartfelt awe ; if we give to the earnestness of prayer 
and thanksgiving all the care we can bestow; if we 
deem the moral nature of our fellow-men inexpressibly 
venerable ; if we hearken with ready submission to every 
whisper of the divine voice of conscience ; then it is not 
possible for us equally to talk " with bated breath " of 
altar-cloths and faldstools, to attend anxiously to the 
thorough-bass with which our prayers are chanted, to 
treat episcopal ordination as altering the moral relations 
of men, or to revere alike the curses of David and the 
precepts of Christ. We honour God before His Church; 
God's law in our hearts before any law in a book ; a 
godlike man before an ungodlike priest. God, and 
virtue, and conscience are venerable primarily, in their 
own right. The Church, the Bible, the priest must 
prove themselves first to be God's Church, a true Bible, 
a virtuous priest, and then we will give them the se- 
condary reverence they derive from such relation. Just 
in proportion, and neither more nor less, that anything 
is united with God and goodness, in so far, and no more, 
is it deserving of our reverence. 

If these views of the grounds of the duty of reverence 
be correct, it will follow that the claims advanced by 
Christians for holy places, books, and days are all to be 



IRREVERENCE. 



91 



admitted under the conditions- — first, of entire subordi- 
nation to the realities of religion ; and secondly, to the 
establishment of their actual relation to those realities. 
Within these limitations, however, many will be startled 
to find can very easily come the claims of other religions 
than the Christian to a share, though it be comparatively 
a trifling one, in our respect. 

Surely the time has arrived when the absurd notions 
of the Fathers concerning the demoniacal nature of 
heathen gods ought to cease to influence men of the 
nineteenth century in their treatment of creeds differing 
from their own.* It would seem as if the reaction from 
the old Roman and Greek latitudinarianism had be- 
queathed to Christendom the conviction that if we dis- 
approve of any one article in our brother's creed, his 
religion loses every claim to our regard, nay, that it is a 
mark of our orthordox piety to pour some degree of con- 
tumely thereupon ! Since a better light is rising amongst 
us ; since we begin to recognise that God is the One 

"Father of all, in every age, in every clime adored," 

it is fit we should renounce this vulgar and ignorant 
contempt for the religion of our brothers. Though, 
as we have seen, nothing short of the recogni- 

* See Tertnllian, Apol. i. 23. His translator, in the Lib. Anglo- 
Catholic Theol. 9 says that the notion that demons actually lurked in the 
heathen idols was maintained by Justin Martyr, Tatian, Origen, Minu- 
cius Felix, Chrysostom, and Gregory ISTazianzen. See also Athena- 
goras, Leg., p. 27. 



92 



RELIGIOUS FAULTS. 



tion of the Infinite Impersonation of the right in the 
Deity, constitutes a religion strictly and scientifically 
identifiable with morality, yet it is not endurable to 
suppose that involuntary mistakes in such matters have 
excluded the millions of God's children from a real 
access to Him, however much they have clouded His 
aspect to their sight. Does a mother, leaning o\ex her 
infant's cradle, refuse to attend to its cries because its 
utterance is inarticulate, or because it babbles some 
other name than " mother ?"* 

No man, howsoever enlightened, can boast of being 
removed above error to such height that he may re- 
pudiate all fellowship in the religion of another. Abso- 
lutely true theology, absolutely perfect worship, is not 

* The names which have been given to God by different nations 
afford a curious insight into the theology of the people choosing them, 
and also have doubtless contributed to influence by reaction those 
theologies themselves. The power, wisdom, eternity, goodness, father- 
hood of God, must in each case be the central idea of the creed which 
calls Him by names derived from one or other of those attributes. 
Even the shades of feeling of members of the same nation in different 
ages may be traced by the preference manifested among the various 
titles proposed by their creed. How the noblest of all His names, our 
glorious old Saxon " God," is removed from us into the cold pseudo- 
philosophy of the last century by the phrases of " the Deity," "the 
Supreme Being!" We may love our "God," our Good Oxe, but we 
can only bow the head before an impersonal abstraction of the Deity. 
Again, the still common name for Him, "the Almighty," how little 
does it express the loving reverence of a moral being for his Father in 
heaven, like whom he aims to be perfect ? The whole point of religion 
is lost when we adopt such words as the natural utterance of our idea 
of God. 



IRREVERENCE. 



93 



for man. It is all a question of degrees. In his gaudy 
wihare, the Buddhist to-day lifts feebly his wavering 
hands to "feel after Grod," the unknown Holiness above 
him. In the mighty fanes where, in future ages, the 
Theist nations shall adore their only Lord, still poor and 
all inadequate must be their offerings of prayer, There 
is no line to be drawn ; lower and lower we may descend, 
till the Oxe seems lost in the many, and all the moral 
attributes are soiled by the foulest mythologies. Less 
and less must of necessity grow our sympathy in such 
worship, less is it possible for us to join for a moment 
in the prostration or the sacrifice. Yet at its utmost 
depth of ignorance and degradation, the religious senti- 
ment of a human soul has a right to receive from us 
whatever share of deference its claims to be religious 
may warrant. It may be that we see the first feeble 
struggles of a new-born life ; it may be that we witness 
the expiring throes of an outworn faith. Tenderness is 
the due, then, of infancy, and mournful pity of old age. 

Methinks that to a religious man, standing amid the 
ruins of Luqsor or Baalbec, beneath the columns of the 
Olympfum or in the sculptured caverns of Elephanta, it 
would seem only a natural impulse to turn his thoughts 
upward where those who could not love God as he may 
do, had yet striven through darkness and error to ap- 
proach Him — that it would be a blessed thing to bow 
where dead generations had bowed, and draw perchance 
once more from the sublime creations of their awe and 
veneration, fresh hallowing influences to a living soul. 



94 



RELIGIOUS FAULTS. 



SECTION III. 

PRAYER LESSXESS. 

Prayer, in its direct aspect, is more immediately a 
Personal than a Religious duty. The neglect of it is 
primarily a disuse of the most powerful instrument in 
our reach for the assistance of our virtue. Nevertheless, 
the unspeakable blessing and honour' of communion 
offered to us by Ofod in prayer renders our rejection of 
them a religious Fault tantamount to a general delin- 
quency in all religious duty. He who cares not to 
obtain the aid of God's grace, or feel the joy of His 
presence, is manifestly in a condition wherein the reli- 
gious part of his nature must be dormant. Such senti- 
ments as remain to him can scarcely possess ethical 
merit, inasmuch as they must be merely the residue of 
those natural instincts which, if duly cherished, must 
have led him to prayer. The occasional Grod-ward 
impidses which show themselves in all men, so far from 
constituting the fulfilment of this obligation, form the 
very ground of their guilt when left barren. Without 
such religious sentiments, man could have no religious 
duty at all. Possessed of them, he is bound to cultivate 
and display them in all the forms of direct and indirect 
worship. 



PRAYERLESSNESS. 



95 



These observations of course refer only to such, as 
accept the great lesson of both intuition and experience, 
and believe that prayer for spiritual good receives a 
real answer from God. It is possible for religious minds 
at an early stage to make mistakes for a time on this 
matter, and to suppose that it were better for them not 
to pray than to presume to approach the Majesty of 
Heaven in the imperfect attitudes of reverence to which 
alone they could force their wandering thoughts. 
Doubtless there is no moral sin in such error, and doubt- 
less Grod never leaves any loving child to suffer from it 
long, but by some tender kindness touches the heart so 
that its flood of gratitude breaks forth and carries away 
for ever the gates of overstrained awe and fear. 



96 



RELIGIOUS FAULTS. 



SECTION IV. 

IMPENITENCE. 

Impenitence is the persistence in any offence or fault, 
personal, social, or religious. The original transgression 
being accomplished, and the righteous will so far over- 
powered, impenitence consists in the prolonged subjuga- 
tion of the higher self to lower desire, the continuance, 
either by sentiment alone or by both sentiment and 
action, of the offence or fault. 

It is obvious that in a state of impenitence we momen- 
tarily accumulate fresh guilt in addition to the primary 
transgression. Nay, in many cases the stubborn senti- 
ments and slow determined actions so committed, must 
be held far to exceed the measure of the first offence, 
even as rancorous and unrelenting hatred and cruelty 
exceed in guilt the anger excited by momentary provo- 
cation. Impenitence usually lacks the palliations of 
the primary sin. Either the sudden overwhelming 
desire or passion has somewhat subsided, or conscience 
has had time to recover from her surprise, to review the 
field of contest, and perceive the whole magnitude of 
her defeat. When all hurry and surprise are over and 
we stand calmly face to face with our sin. if we then 
resolve to persist in it, we surely incur a new guilt 



IMPENITENCE. 



97 



which must go on growing in an ever-increasing ratio 
while we resist each softening influence of time. 

In the aspects now described, impenitence is a fault 
in personal duty, and such of course, in a great measure, 
it must be considered. Its religious bearing is, how- 
ever, so much more prominent in the intuitions of every 
believer in a Grod " who forgiveth sins/' that it is under 
the head of a fault towards Him that it will most fitly 
be classed. In the ensuing chapter the grounds of the 
Duty of Repentance will be so set forth as to show, as 
far as possible, the guilt incurred by its neglect. 



F 



98 



RELIGIOUS FAULTS, 



SECTION V. 

SCEPTICISM. 

The causes of scepticism are somewhat paradoxical. It 
may arise either from fervent Love of Truth or from 
Indifference towards its attainment. 

Scepticism exists as a constitutional tendency where 
the Love of Truth is great, but displays itself rather on 
its negative side as Hatred of Error, and is insufficiently 
balanced by the affirmative tenacity of discovered truth. 
An intellect Sceptical in this way presents the converse 
weakness of the Dogmatic mental constitution, which 
sees whatsoever truths it has found in a light so vivid 
that it perceives none of their collateral modifications. 

Scepticism exists as a moral fault (and can therefore 
alone concern us now), when it arises either from In- 
difference towards Truth or else from Faithlessness in 
Goodness. Indifference to truth produces a scepticism 
of a very opposite kind from that which, as we have 
just noticed, springs from an imperfectly ordered love 
of it. 

In the book on Personal Duty, I shall hope to show 
that the endeavour to form our opinions with the 
utmost possible approach to absolute verity, is not only 
innocent, but notably one of the foremost duties a man 



SCEPTICISM. 



99 



owes to himself. The unwearied and disinterested pur- 
suit of truth is in fact the duty attaching to our intel- 
lectual natures ; and like all other virtues, the love of 
truth must have its negative side in due correspondence 
(though, as above shown, not in preponderance), and 
must include the careful rejection of error. It is absurd 
to suppose that a man can seek truth and be content to 
receive what, for all he knows, may be a falsehood. 
PeojDle who adopt opinions without scrutiny, and boast 
of " entertaining no doubts " concerning them, do not 
merely risk failure in intellectual duty, if it chance that 
their opinions be erroneous : * they incur the certain 
delinquency ; for no man holds a truth morally till he 
has examined his tenure of it. Only when he has a 
right to say "It is true/' he possesses it as a truth. 
Until then it is to him merely a notion acquired by 
haphazard ; and to be content with such, in serious 
matters, is a moral fault. f 

Such being the nature of man's duty as regards the 
pursuit of truth, it is clear that no moral dereliction can 
lie in the same line as that of free earnest inquiry. If 
there be such a fault as scepticism at all (as the universal 
intuition of mankind pronounces there be), it must be 
of altogether a different kind. Nay, as it concerns the 

* %f If your religion is too good to be examined, I doubt it is too bad 
to be believed." — Tillotsox. 

+ "As I take my shoes from my shoemaker, and my coat from my 
tailor, so I take my religion from my priest." — Goldsmith, quoted by 
Boswell. 

F 2 



100 



RELIGIOUS FAULTS. 



very same department of our natures, it can only be a 
failure in that precise duty of seeking for truth which 
concerns that department. Thus I should have classed 
scepticism under the same head as other Personal Faults, 
save for the reason that it is the scepticism of religious 
and moral truths, which so far exceeds the importance 
of all others as to monopolize our attention when we 
consider the subject, and that thus scepticism being, in 
its religious aspect, a religious fault, and herein acquir- 
ing a peculiar guilt, it will more fitly be here discussed. 
It is not that other scepticism involves no sin, that all 
indifference to the truths of science and history is not a 
Personal fault, and all distrust in the fundamental 
spring of goodness in our fellow-creatures a Social fault. 
These have their place ; but infinitely more injurious 
and universal in its action is that scepticism which con- 
sists in indifference to Religious truth or faithlessness 
in God's goodness. 

But, now, as regards this religious scepticism, wherein 
must lie actually its guilt ? Assuredly we cannot fail 
in our duty towards God by fulfilling the duty He has 
appointed us towards ourselves. It is gross superstition 
to suppose that while Tie desires us to seek all other 
truth as truth ; that is, by the use of the mental powers 
He has given us for its discovery — He desires us to 
accept the truths which concern Himself as if they were 
falsehoods ; that is, by a blind acquiescence in unscru- 
tinized testimony. Our duty towards religious truth 
must only be to give it greater earnestness and patience 



SCEPTICISM. 



101 



of investigation in proportion to its greater importance. 
Thus, then, our sin of religious scepticism must be to fail 
in this duty. And how is this done ? I have already 
indicated the two chief lines in which this fault may 
work. 

" Indifference towards truth" is displayed, first, by 
those who never make any inquiries at all respecting 
the grounds of their faith ; and, secondly, by those (to 
whom the name of sceptic is usually applied) who stop 
short at that stage of inquiry where they have only 
learned to doubt, and, lacking interest and patience to 
pursue the road to "the new firm lands of faith beyond," 
remain wandering idly about the " howling wilderness " 
for the rest of their lives. 

"Faithlessness in Goodness" is displayed by those 
who would fain make such inquiries if they dared, but 
are withheld (perhaps unconsciously) by the hidden fear 
lest their search for truth might either displease God or 
lead them to conclusions they are beforehand resolved 
to reject. In all the churches there are, doubtless, 
thousands of persons who go through life timorously, as 
if walking on thin ice ; knowing and dreading the cold 
waters below, and aware of the weakness of their frail 
support ; yet without courage or faith to trample 
through and take their stand on the rock which lies 
beneath both the water and the ice. Priests have 
everywhere persuaded men that to leave their narrow 
folds is to enter upon a path whereon no smile of God 
can lighten, and leading every wanderer sooner or later 



102 



RELIGIOUS FAULTS. 



to the bottomless pit of atheism. TTho has not felt the 
influence of this threat ? To which of us was it not a 
discovery of unutterable joy that he could pray to 
Grod beyond the walls of the churches, and lift to heaven 
the hands from which the manacles had fallen for ever? 
Everywhere there is this faithlessness. The churches 
will not reform their creeds, translations, liturgies, and 
polities, because they have no faith in them. Move a 
beam in those rotten houses, and they fear that all will 
crash in dust. Men of intelligence will neither examine 
their traditional creeds nor quit them, nor suffer their 
wives or dependents to do either the one or the other, 
for they have no faith either in the creeds or in any 
truth beyond, or in the chastity of woman or the honesty 
of man, save backed by the very threats and bribes 
which, beyond all other things, they disbelieve. How 
many thousands of men now living in England, tell us, 
in every key, that without hell in the background private 
virtue and public order would be at an end ! Yet, meet 
those thousands in a theatre, where the jest turns on 
the perdition of some Don Juan, and what tale tell the 
shouts of laughter in our ears concerning the faith of 
the assembly in the reality of any hell or devil ? 

Xow, both these forms of Scepticism, indifference and 
faithlessness, must be religious faults of great magnitude. 
The sin, as has been well said, is precisely this, " that 
there is not in the soul a deep and strong yearning and 
earnest desire to find solutions of our theological diffi- 
culties, and that the great facts of Divine religion are 



SCEPTICISM. 



103 



not experienced to the required degree ; that we are not 
sufficiently religious to be assured of certain facts of 
which religion in its lofty moods would inform us."* 
Whensoever we find ourselves wanting either in interest 
in truth or faith in goodness, we may be assured that 
we are morally deficient somewhere : in fervour, in 
sincerity, in earnestness of obedience, or above all, in 
seeking to renew, in God's communion, our spiritual 
sight. 



* Quinqxtenergia, p. 51. 



104 



RELIGIOUS FAULTS. 



SECTION VI. 

WORLDL1NESS, . 

It was a grand contribution to moral science, that 
which we attribute to Christ in the severance of " World" 
or " Mammon " service from the service of God. Much 
as bigotry and spiritual pride have misused it, the dis- 
tinction has been of infinite use in clearing up to the 
consciences of men that hazy portion of self-conscious- 
ness which belongs to inner feelings and motives when 
outward actions are not visibly implicated. There is a 
mode of life adopted by thousands, in all ages, in which 
the external conduct is decent and unexceptionable, and 
the social sentiments on the whole kindly and good- 
natured. Religious services are performed with punctu- 
ality, and the personal duties of temperance, chastity, 
and veracity receive no infraction. At first sight a life 
of this kind appears unquestionably to take place in the 
ranks of virtue ; nor can it often belong to any save the 
man who leads it to question its right to do so. Yet if 
(as he himself may know) the ambitions and pleasures of 
earth occupy the foreground in his thoughts, cares, and 
desires, it is clear that he fails in the whole spirit of virtue, 
wliich must needs " seek first the kingdom of God and 
His righteousness." He is guilty of that fault of ivorld- 
Uness which is co-extensive with his entire inner life. 



WOKLDLINESS. 



105 



Of the universal deterioration of the character which 
has once been inoculated with the taint of a worldly 
spirit, it needs small observation of life to detect. There 
are probably few who have not known the pang of 
gazing, after a lapse of years, into some once single and 
beloved heart, and finding that u the world's breath 
hath been there/' There is no simple affection or enjoy- 
ment left. All are sunk together in that base pitiful 
care, ;i ' how will it seem ?" 

Of all faults, worldliness brings the largest share of 
punishment in thus poisoning all the springs of plea- 
sure, and leaving nothing to be done or enjoyed for its 
own sake, but everything for the sake of an intangible 
something else beyond. TVe do not half realize to our- 
selves the fact that petty cares and gratifications of 
vanity and ambition, being opposed to the natural 
expansion God intends for our souls, are necessarily 
full of uneasiness. The mind, which is hourly bound 
down to the pitiful details of worldly cares, is like the 
foot of a Chinese woman, ever cramped and aching. 
Duties, however small in outward guise, have always a 
moral grandeur, in which the soul expands healthfully. 
But selfish ambitions bring nothing but pain, or if they 
have pleasures at any time, it is only (as Mackintosh 
says of spite and revenge) the pleasure the gout or the 
toothache may be said to bring when they obtain 
momentary relief. ; Twere better far for us to endure 
real privations, real sufferings, than to have our souls 
dwindled by worldly struggles. 'Twere better to live 

f 3 



108 



RELIGIOUS FAULTS. 



in the shadow of some tremendous gloom — even of 
Calvinism itself — than to be blinded by the glare of the 
thousand foot-lamps of social vanities. 

I know not whether this fault be really increasing 
among us. All such things alter their aspect w r ith 
changing manners, and we notice the new form and 
forget the old, and so conclude we are worse than our 
forefathers. It startles us to find Longinus say of 
avarice, that "the whole world is sick of it beyond a 
cure/' But, growing or stationary, worldliness is, 
indeed, fearfully prevalent amongst us ; which of us 
can say he is free ? It seems as if the seeds were latent 
in us all, and that the moment we come under con- 
ditions favourable for their growth, they spring up 
spontaneously. Once developed, nothing but a strong 
pure love of God or man ever stops their fatal luxuriance. 

A fair test of our own worldly spirit, I think, is this. 
It happens to us all often to consider the difference 
which some lapsed period of time, a year or a decade, 
has made in our condition. Honestly let us answer, 
What circumstances of that condition is it that we 
regard with most interest ? Are we saying to ourselves, 
with complacency, " I have risen a grade in my pro- 
fession ; I have become more respected ; I have added to 
my capital ; I have made an honourable alliance P" If 
these things be so, we may rejoice at them, but must we 
not much more rejoice to say, "I have conquered such 
a vice; I have improved in such a virtue; my heart is 
wider than it was in human benevolence; my faith 



"VVORLDLINESS. 



107 



firmer. God has surely blessed my efforts, and will help 
me to subdue the errors which remain?" That these 
are our real interests, after all, I suppose every one will 
admit. God did not create this world of trial, and place 
His children's souls at school therein, that they might 
win toys. If the end of a man's existence were that he 
might become a general or a millionaire, God would 
hardly have made all this paraphernalia of a moral life. 
Such " ends " might have been accomplished easily for 
a nation of ants. In so far as we are men and women, 
we can only be in the pursuit of our right interest when 
we simply and unaffectedly place our progress in Virtue 
foremost in all our hopes and efforts, and every other 
object subordinate and secondary thereto. 

It is needless, however, to enlarge on a fault which is, 
at least theoretically, well recognised, and whose con- 
demnation is reiterated more frequently perhaps than 
any other from the pulpits of Christendom. Let it 
suffice to note, that so insidious is this endemic of earth, 
that some of its most virulent and complicated forms 
fester perennially those very circles of exclusive reli- 
gious profession wherein are loudest heard the repro- 
bation of its simple manifestations. Rarely is it, that 
in the veriest devotee of fashion, whose years are wasted 
between the park, the opera, the race- course and the 
ball-room, there is half the essential spirit of woridliness 
which exists in the Pharisee of the country town, who 
shakes his or her head with sternest rebuke at the follies 
out of reach. Whether we consider that woridliness be 



108 



RELIGIOUS FAULTS. 



more basely displayed in the worship of wealth, or of 
rank, or of notoriety, or in the excessive desire of appro- 
bation and fear of censure, or in the attaching of vital 
importance to trifling details of comfort or gossip which 
deserve no attention from rational moral creatures, in 
each case the members of our pious coteries must stand 
the worst in the comparison with those who, at least, 
do not add to their fault the assumption of superior 
sanctity or the profession of a higher morality, and who 
seldom descend to the pettiness of ambition or of spite 
which marks too often the behaviour of their judges. 



CHAPTER IV. 

RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS 



SECTION I 

THANKSGIVING, 

A cause to which I have already adverted, namely, the 
ordinary ignoring of the abstract Rightfulness of wor- 
ship, has tended in modern times to displace Thanks- 
giving in an extraordinary manner from its natural 
important position. Let any dispassionate person ex- 
amine the Liturgy of any one of the great Christian 
Churches, or let him collect together what he may 
remember of the extempore prayers of Dissenters, and 
he will, I venture to predict, be surprised to observe 
how marvellously the story of the lepers is verified 
every day ; how for ten Prayers there is but one Thanks- 
giving. " We bless Thee for creation, preservation, and 
all the blessings of this life." Some few short words 
like these at the end of whole Litanies of minute peti- 
tions are thought sufficient to dismiss the million million 
benedictions which our Creator is for ever pouring like 
sunbeams on our heads. Now, if it be right to pray for 
every sort of desirable object, for dry weather and for 



110 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS* 



rain, for victory over our enemies and for deliverance 
from lightning and tempest, plague, pestilence, and 
famine, battle, murder, and sudden death., surely it can- 
not he thought superfluous to thank God for similar 
blessings with at least equal assiduity. Yet, for the 
sunshine and the moonlight, for summer's stores and 
winter's healthful snow, for the radiant earth and 
solemn sea, for fruits and flowers, and brutes and birds, 
for our own wondrous frames of flesh, for sight and 
hearing, taste and smell and feeling, for sleep, for lan- 
guage, for human love, for intellect and memory, for all 
the wondrous powers which permit the child of yesterday 
to converse with the dead of all the ages, and to soar in 
thought through the realms of boundless space — for 
these blessings what liturgy pours its long strains of 
thanksgiving before the throne of the merciful Bene- 
factor ? 

It woidd seem, too, as if the things for which we do 
return some expressions of gratitude were only the 
blessings which come to the lower part of our nature- 
traditional thanksgivings, if I may call them so, for the 
mercies men in ages of barbarism felt to be greatest. 
We say " grace before and after meat we have forms 
of public thanks for good harvests and for victory over 
our enemies. These are well. Even that poor formality 
of grace, as it is commonly understood, it would be sad 
to abandon, profaned though it so often be by the levity 
of its insertion between the paragraphs of a jesting tale, 
or the retorts of an angry argument. But why are no 



THAKKSOIVIKG. 



in 



other blessings save food and safety made themes of 
praise ? These are the dews about our feet ; have we 
no thanks for the showers on our heads ? It might 
almost be questioned whether any of the peculiar mer- 
cies which we possess over those which belonged to our 
ancestors have been recognised in any social worship by 
thanksgiving, "What forms have been ever proposed 
for blessing God for the great discoveries of modern 
science and the progress of political freedom ?— for our 
fire-horse, the steam-engine, whose fodder of coal was 
laid up so carefully a million years ago ; for the facili- 
tation of all kindly intercourse throughout the world ; 
for medical and surgical discoveries without number for 
the relief of human suffering ; for the unspeakable 
blessing of a righteous jurisprudence ? Have we no 
thanks for things like these ? Should the Benedicite of 
the " heir of all the ages " be no stave the longer than 
that of the serf and monk of the centuries when oppres- 
sion and ignorance darkened Europe with their double 
night ? Methinks that each generation of men ought 
to add a strophe, and that ours ought to add many a 
strophe, to the universal hymn of God's happy children. 

If we would understand the nature of the blessings 
God bestows on us, we should do well to remember that 
in Him are united the two characters to which we look 
with greatest trust and veneration. He is at once the 
Father and the Mother of the world. It is only human 
nature completed and perfected, male and female united, 
that can offer to us any Image of Him, If we think, as 



112 



RELIGIOrS OBLIGATIONS. 



we so often do, of Him only in one relation, we shall 
lose unspeakably. The " Parent of Grood, Almighty" is 
both Parents in One. As the Father of the universe, 
He gives us life and provides with all a father's care for 
our preservation and for our progress towards that 
immortal virtue for whose sake the life was given, As 
the Mother of the world, He adds to our existence 
every unhurtful pleasure which the tenderest of woman's 
hearts could devise for the innocent happiness of her 
child. If the Father's gifts be greatest, these are per- 
haps dearer still, for they prove the love of God to be 
something so tender, so inexpressibly gentle and indul- 
gent, that our hearts at their very hardest are melted 
when we do but remember it ;* even as the most aban- 
doned of reprobates are softened when reminded of the 
mother's love which once has blessed them. Surely 
there is something wonderful in the thought of those 
countless millions of little joys which the Wisdom and 
the Power which guide the systems of the suns have 
designed and wrought out for every child amongst us ! 
Let us note a few of these little tokens of God's tender 
love.f 

* " Car 1' amour nous touche beaueoup plus que les bienfaits, parceque 
faire du bien aux autres n'est que dormer quelque chose de ce que nous 
avons, au lieu qu'en les aimant c'est nous donner nous mesmes a eux." 
— St. Jean d'Avila, Discours de V Amour de Lieu. (Euvres in fol. 

t They were very heathen gods truly of whom it was said " They 
take care of great things, and disregard the small." (Cicero, de NcuL 
Deor., b. ii. c. lxvi.) These are the finite deities whom it is Idolatry 
to worship. 



THANKSGIVING. 



113 



It is a trite remark that we are nearly always stimu- 
lated to the various actions needful for our life by a 
sense of pleasure quite superfluous, where mere want and 
pain would have equally compelled us to exertion. Men 
eat, drink, sleep, or take exercise, because these acts are 
pleasures much oftener than because forbearance from 
them entails pain. Each sense has indeed for itself a 
garden of its own delights : — Beauty, and music, and 
perfume, and the tastes of food and drink, and the 
alternations of warmth and coolness, exercise, and 
repose. Blanco White said that a whole Bridgewater 
Treatise might be written on the proofs of beneficent- 
design manifested in the laws of harmonious sounds 
and the adaptation of the human ear to their enjoy- 
ment. Still wider diffused is the delight in beauty, of 
which the whole earth and sky afford one endless spec- 
tacle. Even the humbler sense of smell gives us a 
variety of delicate pleasures which we should rank 
higher than we do were we to pay attention to their 
beneficent power over the memory and the animal 
spirits. Why has Grod made us to enjoy beauty and 
music ? or why simply has He made the flowers but 
out of love like that of a mother? We could have 
lived very well, I suppose, without roses, and jessa- 
mine, and heliotrope, and mignionette. They do not 
seem of any sort of use to our life, nor do they afford 
special service (at least their beauty or perfume 'do not ) 
to any bird or insect. Why, then, did God. make those 
little flowers so bright and sweet ? Why did He give 



114 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



man the innocent occupation of improving tliem by 
culture, and yet spread wild ones almost as fair over 
every spot of earth. ? Why, but to make us happy, to 
gladden our hearts with. His beautiful works, to put 
some proof of His love into every path our feet may 
tread ? Even among our Iranian friends, we feel that 
there is a peculiar tenderness in a gift of flowers which 
the donor has culled especially for us. Many a large 
dotation of lands or gold from a father has called forth, 
less grateful feelings than the little bunch, of our 
favourite roses which, a mother's gentle hands have 
arranged to greet us in our chamber. And shall we 
have no swelling heart, no tearful eye, for Him who gave 
us all the flowers ? 

This is an endless theme, wide as man's nature and 
his world. If I should begin to speak of the joys of 
the affections and of the intellect, instead of a section of 
a chapter, I should write volumes on the duty of thanks- 
giving, Perhaps it would help us to understand a little 
the amount of our debt to the pure benevolence of God 
if we could picture what our life would be without it. 
Let us suppose, not that God is cruel, and determined 
to pierce our defenceless souls and bodies with all the 
darts in the arsenal of Omnipotence, or that He is 
revengeful, and will punish us rigorously for our 
offences against Him, but simply that He does not love 
us. Let us suppose that He has made us for some other 
sake beside our own virtue or' happiness, and that He 
sustains our lives for that unknown purpose, just as a 



THANKSGIVING. 



115 



man keeps a flock of sheep without any more regard 
for their enjoyment than is included in care for their 
growth and preservation. In such a case as this, we 
should expect that there would still be given us powers 
of motion and means of protecting ourselves, and that 
the external world would supply the necessities of our 
animal life. Food would be provided, and keen hunger 
would force us to swallow it. "We should hear sounds 
sufficient to guide us, as the beasts are guided by the 
calls of their kind. We shoidd perceive those odours 
which mark our food to be proper or improper for us. 
We should see the forms and distances of surrounding 
objects. We should have intelligence to make ourselves 
protections from the atmosphere, and to grow corn and 
tend cattle. All these things, and perhaps many more, 
must of necessity have been left to us if we were to 
exist at all ; and the atheist's argument may be granted, 
so far as regards them, that the one chance which threw 
our being must have thrown them all. 

But let us see what is not included in the mere neces- 
sity of life — what proofs of God's actual love and ten- 
derness to us might be deducted from the conditions of 
our existence, and that existence still left untouched. 
Let us suppose that the senses ceased to convey pleasure 
to our brains, that the food which hunger made us eat 
had no taste, the sounds which guided us had no sweet- 
ness, the odours no perfume, the sights no colour. Let 
us suppose a world in which there was still light enough 
to plough and reap, but over whose sky stretched one 



116 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



unbroken cloud, through which no sun ever shone to 
brighten with its noonday glory or hallow with its 
evening lustre, and through whose nights no moon or 
star ever opened up the infinite to the gazer's heart. 
The earth is all colourless, the waters gray like lead, 
grass and corn and trees are all one hue, and there is 
no flower save the black scentless blossoms of the taste- 
less roots. The birds have no song, the insects no 
merry hum ; there is no such thing as music nor the 
sweet soft voice of human love and human wisdom ; 
man has no converse with his kind, for he has no joys 
of intellect or affection to convey. He loves no one — 
his words are merely a call or a command. There is no 
literature, no art, no virtue, no religion. But there is 
life left ? Oh, yes ! abundance of life. The creature 
lives out securely his threescore years and ten, for he is 
goaded every moment by a want which he is always 
able to supply ; and to end his existence would be a 
worse pain than to prolong it. So man lives on in that 
great silent, sunless, loveless, Grodless world. 

Now suppose, reader, that you were brought from 
some planet where existence was such living death as 
this ; and that Grocl took you and placed you on our 
radiant earth, some summer morning, while the sun 
was rising over the sea, and the woods were glittering 
in the dewy light, while the birds were pouring forth 
their songs, and the fragrance of the grass and flowers 
filled the air with sweetness : suppose that you entered 
a human abode, and saw in one chamber a mother 



THANKSGIVING. 



117 



caressing the child on her breast, and in another a 
youth poring over pages fraught with noblest thoughts ; 
and yet again, in another, a strong man on his knees 
wrestling with all his soul for the strength to do some 
great right, and grasping in his faith that Hand which 
can do all things, till at length the victory was won, 
and the loving heart broke forth in praise and adora- 
tion : suppose you could see these things with the eye 
of one who saw them for the first time — would it seem 
to you that a few words of thanks dismissed justly the 
claims of God's tenderness on His thrice-happy chil- 
dren ? 

But, as I have said, there is a greater cause for our 
gratitude to God than the pleasures of this palace-world 
He has built for our present abode. Beyond it lies 
boundless, everlasting life. We are not made for this 
happiness alone, great as it is. It is but an accident of 
the road, a mere world of joys thrown into the great 
design ! What we are made for, what we shall all 
reach at last, is a height of being, a Virtue including 
such love, such joy, that, could we see it now, our 
dazzled sight would never more perceive either the 
pleasures or the trials which belong to mortal life. 
God throws our immortality into the background of 
our consciousness, probably because were we clearly 
to behold it, there could be no salutary punishment, 
no strengthening trial, in our earthly lot. We should 
feel such things no more than we heed the little pebbles 
which lie under our feet when we spring forward into 



118 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



the arms of a long-parted friend. But though our 
immortality cannot now be realized by our feeble brains, 
it is still there — it is waiting for us. In the eye of 
Him to whom the future is as the present, we are even 
now the blessed creatures we shall be hereafter ; pure, 
and good, and strong, beyond our highest aspirations. 
Love of God and of the myriads of our brothers will 
swell with rapture the vast expanse of our hearts, while 
our minds will otow in knowledge, Grod-like and illimit- 
able, as we rove from world to world throughout the 
clusters of the suns, doing indeed at last " the will of 
our Father, even as it is done in heaven,"* and growing 
ever more " perfect, even as He is perfect." 

Is this hope, this faith in the great end and meaning 

* If we could "look up steadfastly," and see the heavens of the 
future opened, and all the sons of men standing at last beside the 
throne of God, all the stories of human wrong and suffering would fall 
from us unfelt. Any one feature in this view of a future life is enough 
to fill us with delight — to make us exclaim — 

1 1 To think, to feel, to love, and be beloved 

By beings sinless, stainless, and by Him 

"Whose smile lights up this radiant universe ! 

Oh, 'tis a dream too glorious for man's soul 

To grapple with ! " 
I cannot help attempting, however, to fix attention on one particular 
which seems to have scarcely received all the consideration it merits. 
Carlyle tells us that Mahomet promised his followers that in Paradise 
"Ye shall sit on seats opposite one another. All grudges shall be 
taken away out of your hearts." (Heroes and Hero-worship* sect. ii. 
I cannot discover the authority for this in the Koran.) And truly this 
would be much, that we should at last look straight at each other's 
souls, free from all the veils our poor mortality is ever clothed with, 



THANKSGIVING. 



119 



of our existence no cause for thankfulness ? Have we 
no gratitude to God that He has not made us like the 
grass, to spring up for an hour in the morning sunlight 

and feel that every cloud of resentment was gone to return no more. 
But this is only the negative side of the case. We may all have noted 
in life how, when we do see into the depths of any human heart, we 
discover, almost with a start, something which calls forth a peculiar 
love to that being. It is the mysterious self we have seen at last, and 
-each living soul has its own awful individuality, known perfectly to 
God alone, yet when in any way revealed to us, calling forth its special 
love. We often institute comparisons between the degrees of our love 
for one or another of those dear to us, and then seem to make a new 
distinction, saying that i 1 we love them in different ways. n But did 
any one ever love any two souls in the same way ? Is there not, as it 
were, a different sentiment in our hearts for every one of our friends ? 
Some of these may be more vivid than others, but this fluctuates from 
a thousand causes. The kind of love which each individual calls forth 
is incapable of being reduced to a thermometric scale. If a mother- 
have ten children she loves them all separately, with feelings quite 
individual and distinct, so far as the human affection prevails beyond 
mere animal instinct. With the growth of our nature the power of 
multiplying such individual affections increases illimitably. A pure, 
unselfish, spiritual love, so far from using up any portion of our affeo- 
tional power, only brings fresh fuel to the fire, a light to brighten a 
new facet of the many-sided diamond. What world-wide capacity for 
joy lies then latent in us all in the Love which is to expand throughout 
our immortality ! What happiness even now can claim to parallel that 
swelling of the heart in perfect tenderness and reverence which we 
sometimes feel towards some noble human friend ? Nor will the self- 
reflective desire to be beloved detract always, as it does now, from our 
full joy. We may be loved hereafter even as we love, for we may 
become worthy of all love, and may then be known truly as we are, 
without terror of misapprehension or mistrust. 

But further. Love is perfected only in triune* sympathy. It is when 



120 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



and to be cut down at even, dried up and withered for 
ever ? Some time or other we shall learn what it 
is to have been created an immortal, rational, free 

AGENT. 

There are, I think, several reasons why the belief in 
a future state, though all but universal among human 
beings, has yet failed to quicken, in any very noticeable 
degree, the general gratitude of the race. In the first 
place, it has been (as above remarked) left by the Crea- 
tor in the background of our consciousness. We believe 
in it, but we can hardly ever realize our belief. In the 
second place, this great hope of the world has been per- 
verted by priestcraft and superstition into its great fear. 
It is only when religion is another name for base self- 
interestedness that any one can really rejoice and find 
cause for thankfulness in the expectation of a private 
happiness which will be balanced by the eternal misery 

the chord of religious feeling in our brother's heart sounds in harmony 
with our own that friendship forms its deepest, tenderest tie — the tie 
which we instinctively recognise as eternal. Death may thenceforth 
sever us outwardly, and sin even seem to do so inwardly, but we can 
never feel the same as before to one with whom our hearts have ascended 
in love to God. We shall all love God in the bright "beyond" — love 
Him as now we cannot dream. 

If it be true, as seems very likely, that we must begin our future life 
in a somewhat childlike state, both as regards the new senses whose 
use we must learn, and our relation to the elder-born souls who have 
had longer experience of those greater worlds, how blessed will it be 
to renew once more all those fresh delights, that sweet trustfulness 
whose departure filled the close of youth with such regret ; to be young 
again in all that makes childhood beautiful and holy ! 



THANKSGIVING. 



121 



of others. There is no better proof of the power and 
vitality of man's consciousness of immortality than that 
it has supported for ages such a solid mass of horrors as 
the doctrine of eternal hell. 

But to us, who are assured that God has made every 
rational creature to be for ever good and happy — to us, 
I say, is there any excuse why the faith in immortality 
should not call forth gratitude ? Does it not complete 
into one perfect harmony alike our highest thought of 
God's great goodness, and the fond, natural longings of 
our poor human hearts ? Without this faith we should 
not merely lose our own infinite hope, precious as that 
needs must be ; we should also lose much of the com- 
pleteness of our idea of God, and even of the moral law. 
To have created such beings as we are, endowed us 
with such powers, led us by such laborious training to 
virtue, and accepted from us and granted to us so much 
love, and then to leave us to fade away and perish, all 
our high thoughts, our holy aspirations, our fervent 
efforts, quenched in endless night — that would not be 
God-like. We could not bear to think of God's work 
so ending. Nay, the law itself, immutable as it ever 
would stand, would lose its crown of royalty could we 
not believe that sooner or later God would make it 
triumphant throughout the universe. That he who 
deserves punishment should be punished, that he who 
has obeyed the eternal right should be made happy ; 
these are the natural fulfilments of the law for which 
we cannot help looking from the justice and the 



122 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



benevolence of Him in whom it is impersonated. Take 
away immortality, and the law is left without supre- 
macy de facto, or with such only as may be exercised 
in the narrow field of earthly existence.* 

There are some who say that the intuitive doctrine of 
immortality offers a prospect far less bright than that 
held out by the traditions of Protestant Christendom. 

* "The whole course of life must be subject to moral maxims ; but 
this is impossible, unless with the moral law, which is a mere idea, 
reason connects an efficient cause, which ordains to all conduct which 
is in conformity with the moral law an issue, either in this or in 
another life, which is in exact conformity with our highest aims. Thus 
without a God, and without a world invisible to us now, but hoped for, 
the glorious ideas of morality are indeed objects of approbation and of 
admiration, but cannot be the springs of purpose and action ; for they 
do not satisfy all the aims which are natural to every rational being, 
and which are determined, a priori, by pure reason itself, and necessary 
{i.e., both virtue and happiness). Happiness alone is, in the view of 
reason, far from being the complete good. Eeason does not approve 
of it (however much mclination may desire it), except as united with 
desert. On the other hand, morality alone, and with it mere desert, 
is likewise far from being the complete good. To make it complete, he 
who conducts himself in a manner not unworthy of happiness must be 
able to hope for the possession of happiness. Even reason, unbiassed 
by private ends or interested considerations, cannot judge otherwise if 
it puts itself in the place of a Being whose office it is to dispense all 
happiness to others. For in the practical idea both points are essen- 
tially combined, though in such a way that participation in happiness 
is rendered possible by the moral disposition as its condition, and not, 
conversely, the moral disposition by the prospect of happiness. For a 
disposition which should require the prospect of happiness as its neces- 
sary condition would not be moral, and hence also would not be worthy 
of complete happiness." — Kant's Kritik, " Transcendental Doctrine of 
Method," chap. ii. sect. 2. 



THANKSGIVING. 



123 



These persons commonly thrust out of sight the alleged 
destiny of the wicked, and rest their gaze exclusively 
on a brilliant picture of ecstatic Paradise, to which 
they expect direct admittance through the door of the 
tomb. Dazzled by the visionary glitter of the golden 
streets of the New Jerusalem, they turn contemptuously 
from the man who can only point calmly to the stars of 
an actual heaven, and avow that he looks for a continu- 
ance in other worlds of the laws which have ruled his 
existence here. Absolute and immediate happiness, 
which shall never know diminution or increase, and a 
sinlessness which shall for ever exclude the possibility 
of trial or temptation ; these are the hopes which are 
said to leave the faith of nature in the shade. 

I will not now ask whether these brilliant pictures be 
true, whether they be even possible. Let us suppose 
that a finite creature could be impeccable, and yet 
something higher than a brute. Let us suppose that 
we have evidence that God has revealed to His 
creature that such a Heaven awaits the just. Would 
it be, indeed, a joy to anticipate it ? Should we prefer 
it (even after refining away every image of earthly 
grandeur into an emblem of purity and spiritual glory) 
to the immortal Progress which intuition teaches us to 
expect ? 

It seems to me that the higher we have ascended in 
the path of virtue and religion, the less we should 
desire the Paradise of unbroken repose which is offered 
to us. It is the best — perhaps the only — test of the 

g 2 



124 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



sincerity of repentance for past sins, that we should be 
willing and glad to suffer their just expiation. If a 
man feel in dying that justice has not had its claims 
satisfied as regards him, that he has suffered very little 
and sinned a great deal, such a man ought undoubtedly 
to look forward with a solemn rejoicing to the fulfil- 
ment, in another life, of that Divine retribution which 
he adores. A stricter school and severer chastisement 
have nothing to dismay him. He feels that they would 
be Right and in accordance with God's character ; and 
the wish of his heart is, that the Right may be done, 
and God's perfect attributes maintained. This he must 
feel independently of the knowledge that the Divine 
Retribution is also the Divine Correction, and that the 
faults of his present disposition will be healed by such 
merciful medicine. To tell a man who feels like this, 
that he is going to instant, endless beatitude, would 
only be to throw his mind into amazement and to con- 
found all his sense of justice.* 

On the other hand, let us suppose that a man has 
faithfully worked his way through the trials of life, and 
stands on the shore of the dark river with his loins still 
girded for the great race of virtue, and his heart filled 
with holy ambition to grow evermore better and nobler. 
And let us suppose that after the first burst of joy at 

* Nor would the latter be satisfied by the additional assurance that 
this unaccountable defalcation in the Divine Justice was the result of 
the sufferings of a being who had not sinned or deserved any suffering 

■whatever. 



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125 



finding himself suddenly advanced to that incompre- 
hensible state of sinlessness, an angel should convey to 
him this decree : — " The stage you have now reached of 
moral progress is the highest to which you shall ever be 
permitted to attain. Throughout all the millenniums 
of your immortality your felicity shall remain unbroken, 
and never once be ennobled or freshened by a single 
act of self-sacrifice. Never more shall you be allowed 
to offer to God one poor effort of obedience, or do for 
Him a task which shall cost you a moment's pain. And, 
as the consequence of this, you shall never be nearer 
to God than you are at this moment, never gain that 
larger, stronger soul which would make you more 
sensible of His presence, and enable you better to 
apprehend His goodness. You shall love Him and 
know his love only as you do now through all the ages 
of eternity." Would not a sentence such as this sound 
like a curse to the ears of the true child of God ? After 
centuries of that stagnant heaven, would he not pine 
even for our world of trial, where virtue is at least a 
thing living and growing, not a mere embalmed 
mummy, and where love can yet offer the sacrifice in 
which it is its nature to delight ? * 

* Perhaps it will be answered that there is no necessity for supposing 
that the absolute felicity, of the blessed should exclude them from pro- 
gress. I answer that the hypothesis that a finite being could enjoy 
absolute felicity, and could be absolutely impeccable, are already two 
absurdities, to which it is indeed easy to add a third ; namely, that, 
being impeccable, he could still grow in virtue (i.e., in the strength 
acquired by self-conquest in peccable beings). It is, however, sum- 



126 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS, 



No ! there is nothing happier to be conceived of by 
heart of man than that which is actually true ; that 
which the intuition God has given us, and the whole 
analogy of His government, lead us to expect : an 
immortality of progress, an everlasting growth in virtue 
and in love. If, then, we are grateful to that Good 
One for the "life that now is," should we not also bless 
Him for "that which is to come?" Should we not 
sometimes raise our thoughts to view the whole scope of 
our existence, and the nature of the boon it really is, 
viewed in one vast perspective of endless good ? It 
would have been a great benefaction (as many a noble 
soul doubtful of its immortality has cheerfully admitted) 
merely to have been given existence for a few years in 
this world of beauty, to have been called to behold even 
one little scene of this splendid drama. But when our 
faith embraces what God has actually designed for us 
through all the cycles of unending futurity, it is some- 
thing so stupendous that we become ungrateful from 
the very impossibility of conceiving the magnitude of 
the gift. 

Rightly comprehending the meaning of our existence 
as an everlasting progress, in which Happiness is only 
the secondary, and Virtue the primary end, we shall 
also be better able to estimate the value of those 
blessings which tend more directly to assist our 

ciently foolish to argue at all on a self-contradictory hypothesis. I 
wished simply to show the moral answer to the objection sometimes 
made to the philosophic idea of the immortal life. 



THANKSGIVING. 



127 



moral life. Of course, all that God does for us helps 
this great design, for which He made us at first, clothed 
us with garbs of flesh, and built for us this planet- 
home. We may take everything that preserves our 
animal life, everything that assists our intellect and our 
affections, as God's instrument to bring us onward and 
upward. The necessaries of existence do this by afford- 
ing a ground for the moral life. The luxuries, which 
add happiness to that physical existence, do it by 
warming and encouraging the better sentiments of our 
nature, proving to us God's tender care, and offering us 
opportunities of self-sacrifice for others. Further yet, 
beside the necessaries of life and the joys thereunto 
added, God helps us by sufferings. These are often the 
very best helps, and consequently the best blessings of 
all, healing our sinful hearts and making us advance 
with tenfold rapidity on the path towards our glorious 
end. Hereafter, I doubt not, when we look back to 
earth from the high spheres of our future being, we 
shall all thank God most fervently for these very 
sufferings. The memory of the dear homes of our child- 
hood, of the scenes of requited affection, or of honest 
joy in the success of noble labours — even these will fade 
before the still more grateful recollection of the sick- 
beds where our strength and health were struck down, 
and of the graves where our dearest human affections 
lay buried. 

And yet further does God help us, and more power- 
fully, more directly, than by suffering itself. Over the 



128 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



chaos of our conflicting will and desires His Spirit 
broods, 64 moving on the face of the deep/' and stilling 
into sunniest calm the night- storm of those howling 
waves. For the inspiration which has enlightened the 
conscience, for the grace which has melted and purified 
the heart, who shall thank God enough ? Who shall 
count the value of each holy thought, each tear of 
penitence, each throb of aspiration, which he has caused 
to start in the darkened mind, the hardened conscience? 

Let us hope that these spiritual blessings at least 
are rarely received thanklessly. Perhaps their most 
unfailing result is to flood the soul with a sense of 
gratitude unutterable, while we think that to sinners 
like us the holy Lord of Heaven stoops to give His 
aid. 

If these be the grounds for gratitude from man to 
God, we ought not, I think, to have much hesitation in 
granting the principle with which I started ; namely, 
that it is absolutely Eight for man to pay the direct 
worship of Thanksgiving to his Creator. Antecedent 
to the demand of it from God, or from any prospect of 
gain to our own virtue, is it not right that such gifts 
should draw forth thanks ? When we read of some 
cruel despot going down peacefully and triumphantly 
to the grave, unrepentant and even exulting, we feel 
that there would be something wrong somewhere if that 
wretch did not suffer a portion of the agonies he has 
inflicted. When we contemplate the immeasurable 
benefits which God has heaped on his creatures, do we 



THANKSGIVING. 



129 



not also feel that there would be wrong somewhere if 
He received no gratitude in return ? 

But how is such gratitude to be displayed ? I 
answer. Let it only be felt, and then it will be displayed 
in every action of our existence. If we could but feel 
it as we ought, ay, or but a hundredth part as much, it 
would colour our whole nature, and break out in every 
brightened glance of our eyes and gladdened tone of 
our voices. It is the sentiment of gratitude which the 
Eternal Right demands as the tribute from a finite to 
an infinite Spirit, and the action can be of value only 
as the token of that sentiment. 

Man is a being so constituted that his sentiments 
naturally express themselves in his deportment, words, 
and actions. We are all so well aware of this, that, 
unless we have reason to suppose the exertion of a 
strong volition to control the display of any sentiment, 
we invariably doubt the veracity of such as do not 
show themselves externally in all these ways. In like 
manner we may well suspect the sincerity of our own 
gratitude to God when we find that the expression of it 
begins and ends in a few words of formal thanksgiving, 
mostly repeated with even greater coldness and careless- 
ness than degrades our prayers. To make our gratitude 
credible to ourselves we ought to be able to trace its 
impulse through our whole outward bearing. Beings 
blessed as we are, and capable of comprehending our 
blessings, ought to live and move in an atmosphere of 
love and trust ineffable. Our faces ought to reflect 

g 3 



130 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



back the sunshine of heaven, and the joyful tones of 
our voices to seem the echo of its halleluiahs. What 
fitness have the clouded brow, the peevish whine, for 
the creature who knows that Infinite Love is guiding 
e7ery turning of his path, purposely to lead him to 
everlasting blessedness ? Our forefathers attributed to 
Odin himself the saying, " There is no malady more 
severe than not to be contented with our lot/ 5 * 
Perhaps we might add further, " Nor any sin worse 
than a repining of spirit." 

If we were really thankful, we should show it in 
some such ways as these : — 

We should be absolutely content at heart ; not 
merely resigned, but cheerful. There seems great error 
current still in the world on this point. True religion 
is and ought to be something more than "Islam." 
Resignation, patience, submission, belong, not to the 
happy rule of human life, but to the exceptional hours 
of grief and agony, when our poor hearts can ascend to 
nothing beyond. For the vast majority of our days, 
when God is actually loading us with joys of the senses, 
the intellect, and the affections, to talk of "resignation" 
seems almost a mockery. What if we can imagine 
some other pleasures beside those He has seen best for 
us ; if we yearn for larger spheres of mental action, or 
more tender bonds of human love ; if we chafe against 
the fetters which weakness, or poverty, or the conduct 
of others, places on our freedom ; if we smart under 
* Havd-mal (Song of Songs), trans. Mallet. 



THANKSGIVING. 



131 



frequent bodily pain, or the worse pangs inflicted by 
unkindness — what are all these, and the thousand trials 
like them, compared to the great overweight of blessings 
in the opposite scale ? Cannot we trust Grod, who has 
given us ninety and nine pleasures, that, if He withhold 
the hundredth, it is from no forgetfulness, no niggardli- 
ness ? Cannot we feel assured that He ever makes us — 

"As blest as we can bear " 

as happy as will consist with our highest welfare now 
and for ever ? We all believe this in theory, but yet 
our spirits are for ever falling back into the same 
repining state, which we attempt to cloak under the 
name of resignation. The martyr of an agonizing 
disease, who knows he must endure tortures ending 
only with his life, the bereaved heart which aches in 
utter solitude ; these may be " resigned." It is a noble 
and holy sight to see how in such trials even the 
weakest often rise to most beautiful virtue, and "in 
patience possess their souls." Sometimes even under 
such torments men have ascended still higher, and have 
spoken of joys of Divine Love pouring into their 
wounds a peace ineffable. 

But is it for the healthy and the beloved to talk of 
the same "resignation," as if, in relinquishing the one 
pleasure denied them out of their full harvests, they 
were exercising the same virtue? When we cease to 
relish the joys God grants us because there is still 
another He does not grant ; when we sit down with 



132 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



folded hands and say to our great Parent, " Without 
this gift we cannot enjoy any other of Thine innu- 
merable provisions for our happiness, so we do not pre- 
tend to be cheerful ; but we are resigned, oh, perfectly 
resigned" — is it not most puerile pretence? Does not 
old Selden say well, "If a king should give you the 
keeping of a castle, with all things belonging to it, 
orchards and gardens, and bid you use them, and 
withal promise you after twenty years to remove you to 
the court and make you a privy- councillor ; if you 
should neglect your castle, and refuse to eat of those 
fruits, and sit down and whine and wish you were a 
privy-councillor, do you think the king would be 
pleased with you? Whilst you are upon earth enjoy 
the good things that are here (to that end were 
they given), and be not melancholy and wish yourself 
in heaven." * 

It was a great word of Paul, and worthy of his 
mighty soul, "Rejoice in the Lord alway : and again I 
say, Rejoice. "f Only with the spirit of religious joy 

* Table-talk. Butler understands resignation in a far nobler sense 
than this. " Our resignation to the will of God may be said to be per- 
fect when our will is lost and resolved up in His ; when we rest in His 
will as our end, as being itself most just, and right, and good. And 
where is the impossibility of such an affection to what is just, and right, 
and good, such a loyalty of heart to the Governor of the universe as 
shall prevail over all sinister indirect desires of our own ? Neither is 
this at bottom anything more than faith, and honesty, and fairness o 
mind, in a more enlarged sense, indeed, than those words are commonly 
used." — Butler, Sermons on Human Nature, xiv. 

f Phil. iv. 4. 



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133 



can the great duty of gratitude be fulfilled, and every 
other duty made perfect by alacrity and delight. 

Surely it ought not to be very hard to be content 
with that lot which Wisdom Infinite sees to be best to 
bring us to the very highest en.d attainable by a created 
being, and which the God we love guides every moment 
accordingly ! Even if this were not so, if it were for 
other great and holy ends in His creation that God 
sometimes withheld our joys or inflicted our sufferings, 
and if we obtained no individual benefit thereby, could 
we give up nothing, endure nothing, for His sake, and to 
aid His blessed designs ? It is utterly vain to talk of 
religion at all, unless we can be Content, unless we can 
merge our selfish cravings for happiness in God's 
righteous will.* 

Animal spirits, there is no doubt of it, have much to 
do with cheerfulness and contentment. Many of us can 
be gay and satisfied under circumstances which would 
sorely try our less elastically constituted neighbours. 
To one the duty is generally so easy as to demand no 
moral exertion whatever. To another it is the very 
culmination of his highest efforts. But small or great 
the difficulty, on all of us it lies. If we have natural 
cheerfulness, we must keep it equable, when our spirits 
(as they do in every one) fluctuate from want of excite- 

* " Believe me now, when I tell you the very bottom of my heart. 
In all the difficulties and crosses of my life this is my consideration : 
since it is God's will, I do not only obey, but assent to it ; nor do I 
comply out of necessity, but from choice." — Seneca. 



134 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



ment or over-excitement. If our cheerfulness comes 
not naturally from our bodily state, then it must come 
from something far higher, from the resolute virtuous 
will, at one with God, and loving all that Grod ap- 
points. 

Secondly. "We should show gratitude by actually 
expressing our thanks in the words which would 
spontaneously issue from our lips were our hearts truly 
kindled. Our acts of worship would often include 
recitals of the benefits we receive, and at every moment 
of enjoyment where formal worship was impossible we 
should send up to Grod the thought of gratitude. 

I believe that few things would more completely 
modify our lives than such habitual thanksgiving. 
Suppose that, instead of confining our grace to one 
meal in the day, we were each to say in our own hearts 
a little grace after each successive occupation. The 
business of the field or the office honestly and punctually 
performed to the best of our abilities— a kind act which 
we have been permitted to accomplish, whether with 
or without self-denial — a study which we have pursued 
to the enlargement of our minds — a conversation which 
has aided our own or another's good thoughts, or 
warmed our kindly sympathies with friendly inter- 
course — a walk or ride in the fresh air, invigorating 
brain and limbs — are not all these worth a "grace" as 
well as the best of good dinners ?* And if we were thus 

* The Rabbins appoint benedictions for every event of life. The 
following are from Leo of Modena. In the morning, on awaking : 



THANKSGIVING, 



135 



to accustom ourselves to thank Grod for the innocent 
pleasures of life, how sharp a line would it force us to 
draw between them and the guilty ones, for which we 
could not dare to bless Him ! After spending hours of 
idleness, when labour was due ; after self-indulgence, 
when we might have benefited our brother ; after read- 
ing bad books ; quarrelling, slanderous or unclean talk ; 
meals at which we sunk our souls in gluttony and 
excess — could we offer thanks after these things to 
Him whose gifts we had polluted? Surely not the 
most impious among us all ! Thanksgiving then 
would divide, as with chemical test, the evil pleasures 
from the good, And it would hallow and endear these 
good ones beyond our conception. To a loving heart 
even the merest trifle becomes precious when accepted 
as a token of care for our welfare ; and so every blessing 
of mortal life may be taken as proving the tender mercy 
of Him whom we may reverence and love beyond the 
noblest and nearest of earthly friends. These feelings 
come to us all, at times. There are days (perhaps most 
commonly when the heart is softened by penitence), 
blessed days, when we trace everything to God's hand, 

" Blessed be Thou, 0 Lord our God, King of the world, who restorest 
life to the dead, and who enlightenest the blind." On applying them- 
selves to study the law : "Blessed be Thou, 0 Lord, who hast given us 
the law." On taking food : " Blessed be Thou, who bringest bread out 
of the earth. Blessed be Thou, Creator of the fruit of the vine," On 
smelling flowers, &c. : "Blessed be Thou, who hast created odour." 
On seeing a high mountain or the sea : ' ' Blessed be Thou, 0 Lord our 
God, Creator of all things at the beginning," &c. 



136 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



and are ready to weep in very tenderness for the prim- 
rose which has blossomed in our favourite nook; or the 
caresses of the poor dog, which its Maker and ours has 
taught to sympathize so wondrously with our joy and 
sorrow. Oh that we could keep for ever fresh such 
feelings as these ! It is not they which are false and 
exaggerated. It is our ordinary coldness which is a 
mockery of the great reality of God's goodness and 
man's obligations. 

Nor is it only for ourselves and our own blessings 
that we ought to give thanks to (rod, I have already 
said that we should bless Him for the beautiful and 
beneficent Order of His creation, and it is not merely 
inasmuch as this benefits us that we ouo'ht to do it. 

o 

Surely a good given to our brother is a source of 
gratitude. Surely the happiness of the myriad mil- 
lions of our fellow- creatures, rational and irrational, in 
the past and in the future, is a subject fit for thanks- 
giving. AVe have spoken often of the abstract wrong 
there would be were crime to remain for ever unpunished. 
Does it not seem there would be also a wrong if this 
whole lovely planet should roll on for age after age 
around the life-giving sun, followed by the sweet, holy 
moon, enjoying all the beneficent alternations of summer 
and winter and day and night, freshening its great 
oceans with the tides, and covering its shores with the 
gorgeous robe of vegetable life, giving birth and suste- 
nance to all the joyous tribes of insect and fish and 
bird and brute, and yet that from this happy sphere 



THANKSGIVING. 



137 



no incense of thanks should ever ascend into the heavens 
to bless the Lord of all for the order of His beautiful 
universe ? 

A thousand centuries ago, when Grod looked down on 
this third planet of this solar system in this galaxy of 
suns, there was (as we think) no living soul who trod 
its surface endowed with the power to apprehend its 
bounteous intent, or to return Him an expression of 
gratitude. The mighty Ichthyosaurus wallowing in 
those turbid waves, the fearful Pterodactyle spreading 
his bat-wings in the heated air, the giant Megatherium 
trampling through the forests of primeval pines — what 
knew they of the Maker who built their monster forms, 
and planted their luxuriant woods, and sent the light 
of His sun to their large horny eyes, and made His 
rain to grave its traces on that red sandstone of the 
olden world, even as to-day He sends it on the cultured 
fields of the rational sons of men ? And now, when 
perchance many a hundred thousand years have passed 
away since the far-off epochs of the Saurian and the 
giant Sloth, when God looks down now on our garden- 
globe, how many does He see, upon all its smiling 
surface, offering up the dumb world's thanks to Him, 
its kind and careful Lord ? It is but a few, even now, 
who can thus be the spokesmen of the silent earth. 
The brutes, and birds, and fish of our time are as 
insensible of religion as the monster creatures of old ; 
the ass and the ox of to-day know the crib and the fold, 
as the mammoth and the hyena knew the ancient 



13S 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



caverns where their petrified bones have lain all these 
millenniums ; but no steps of advance can we yet trace 
in their knowledge of Him to whose infinite heart their 
hungry cries have never appealed in vain, " who opem 
eth His hand, and fuliilleth the desire of every living 
thing." Man's sacred race alone may yet produce 
aspirants for the solemn priesthood of our world ; 
and of that great family how few are the happy sons 
who can stand forth in that high office ? Take away 
the child in years and the child in knowledge ; take 
away the savage whose creed has not yet reached 
even the polytheisms power to thank under many 
names the One Giver of all good ; take away all 
these, and how few remain who can look up to God 
with that tear -brimming eye which must ever turn 
to Him after any wide survey of His bounteous 
world ! 

Surely, then, it becomes well every soul amongst us 
which is capable of it to take on itself this blessed 
work, to leave not wholly and for ever unthanked God's 
goodness to those who cannot thank Him, but to put 
aside for awhile the thought of our own present and 
everlasting joy, and turn to bless our Benefactor for 
being also the kind and tender Parent of all our count- 
less fellow-creatures. Let us thank God for ourselves; 
but let us also thank Him for others. Let us thank 
Him for His good providence towards all the tribes of 
men now living or departed ; for His care of them on 
earth, for His love for them when gathered in by death 



THANKSGIVING. 



139 



still closer to His infinite bosom. Let us thank God 
that there are millions who share all our joys, and that 
there are millions who have joys which we shall never 
share. Let the blind, and deaf, and crippled thank 
God for the seeing, and the hearing, and the healthy 
limbs of their brothers. Let the hungry praise God 
that others have food, the bereaved that others have 
the joys of affection, the orphan that others have parents, 
the childless that others have children. 

And what if we should go yet a step beyond our own 
race, and bless God sometimes for the brutes ; bless Him 
not only that He has made so many of them useful to 
us, but that He has made them all for their happiness ? 
If we could embrace in one view all the innocent delights 
of all the dwellers in earth, and sea, and air, what moun- 
tainous worlds of bliss would seem piled up before us ! 
The shoals of the merry fish swimming in the blue 
waters those same endless dances which the insects fly 
in the summer air and the little rabbits and mice run 
along upon the ground ; the stately beasts browsing or 
ruminating gently over earth's broad pastures, from the 
Tartar's grassy plains to the measureless savannahs of 
the West ; the birds singing at their work as they build 
their nests in the love that knits their little fluttering 
hearts, whether beating, beneath the splendid plumes of 
the tropic tribes or clothed in the " russet livery" of 
those humble sparrows whose fall Christ knew that God 
will mark — what oceans of joy are here ! The elements 
absolutely swarm with beings whose delight is visible to 



140 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



our. eyes every clay ;* and if we turn to count the tiny 
'"beings which dwell unperceived around us, down to the 
infusoria, of which two drops of water hold a population 
larger than the whole human race, by what arithmetic 

* "Look over the bountiful distribution of joy in the world. It 
abounds in the lower walks of creation. The young fish you shall even 
now find on the shallow beaches of some Atlantic bay, how happy they 
are! Voiceless, dwelling in the cold, unsocial element of water, moving 
with the flapping of the sea, and never still amid the ocean waves' 
immeasurable laugh — how delighted are these little children of God ! 
Their life seems one continuous holiday, the shoal waters a playground. 
Their food is plenteous as the water itself. Society is abundant, and 
of the most unimpeachable respectability. They have their little 
child's games, which last all day long. Xo one is hungry, ill-man- 
nered, ill-dressed, dyspeptic, love-lorn, or melancholy. They fear no 
hell. These cold, white-fleshed, and bloodless little atomies seem 
ever full of joy as they can hold — wise without study, learned enough 
without book or school, and well cared for amid their own neglect. 
They recollect no past ; they provide for no future : the great God of the 
ocean their only memory or forethought. These little short-lived 
minnows are to me a sermon eloquent : they are a Psalm to God above 
the loftiest hymnings of Theban Pindar or the Hebrew king. On the 
land see the joy of the insects just now coming into life — the adven- 
turous birds — even the reptiles. The young of all animals are full of 
delight. A new lamb, or calf, or colt, just opening its eyes on the 
old world, is happy as fabled Adam in his Eden. As they grow older 
they have a wider and a wiser joy — the delight of the passions and the 
affections, to apply the language of men to the consciousness of the 
cattle. It takes the form not of rude leapings, but of quiet cheerful- 
ness. The matronly cow, ruminating beside her playful and hornless 
little one, is a type of quiet joy and entire satisfaction ; all her nature 
clothed in well-befitting happiness." — Parker's Sermons of Religion: 
Sermon vii., Co?iscioiis Religion as a Source of Joy. 



THANKSGIVING. 



141 



shall we estimate the gifts of life and joy rained down 
from the infinite love of Heaven ? 

Surely, surely, it would be right that we should some- 
times lift our souls to God in thanksgiving for all His 
endless care and goodness towards the creatures whom 
He has not disdained to make happy, though they can 
never bless Him for their happiness. 



142 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



SECTION II. 

ADORATION. 

If we distinguish the duty of Adoring God (that is, of 
feeling and expressing towards Him a reverential love 
founded on His moral perfection) from the duties of 
Thanksgiving and Prayer, we shall arrive at a more 
accurate comprehension than is usual of the various 
phases of the religious sentiment. The moral love of 
God, which is the spring of Adoration, is in fact the 
primary fount of the whole religion of all moral 
creatures ; for (as I observed in discussing the canon 
of religious duty) a mere Sense of Dependence, be it 
never so entire, even if it include dependence for 
existence itself and all its blessings, still falls short of 
being a Religious Sentiment till the ethical element of 
a sense of Moral Allegiance be added thereto. Adora- 
tion, to our moral ideal, is that which makes thanks- 
giving to our heavenly Benefactor a Religious act ; and 
the same holds good with respect to prayer, since it 
would be altogether out of question to implore grace 
and light, except from a Being recognised as the All- 
Righteous God of Truth. 

Adoration, then, taken in its largest sense, is religion : 
it is the nucleus round which all grateful feelings, all 



ADORATION. 



143 



holy aspirations, cluster and shine together in that one 
heavenly star. This may be deduced from the great 
canon of religious duty itself, " Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thine heart." If we understand 
this Divine love in its strictest sense, we shall find the 
law of adoration, properly so called, the law of that 
reverential love towards the morally perfect Being 
which it behoves all moral creatures in the universe to 
entertain. If we give a wider significance to the 
canon, it includes all those sentiments of gratitude and 
aspiration (besides subordinate feelings of the love of 
the beautiful and of the true) which, as I have said, 
cluster round adoration, and, while deriving their 
sanctity from it, add doubly to its attraction and 
its lustre. 

For the present I shall confine myself to the topic of 
adoration considered in its stricter sense as that form 
of worship which consists in reverent love both felt and 
expressed for the moral attributes of God. And, in the 
first place, I hope I may assume that it is practically 
superfluous to prove to any one that it is right he 
should adore God so soon as he recognises His good- 
ness. Nevertheless, as it is the office of a moralist to 
show the derivation of each duty on which he would 
insist, I shall briefly observe that the actual rightful- 
ness of adoration must be understood to stand immedi- 
ately on the nature of God and man, and to result 
necessarily from the moral relation of the latter to the 
former. We are here absolutely at the basis of all 



144 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



morals ; for the original obligation to feel and do all 
those sentiments and actions which according to the 
necessary eternal distinction are Right, that same obli- 
gation holds us to venerate that Right, not only in the 
abstract as the ideal Law, and in its imperfect concrete 
presentations in human Yirtue, but supremely in its 
perfect personification in the absolutely Righteous God. 
So clear is this great truth, that it seems not only 
superfluous, but almost impious, thus to demonstrate 
the duty of adoring God, as if all duty was not linked 
by a thousand chains to His throne, from which alone it 
has reached and bound our souls ! But unhappily such 
arguments are not wholly needless. On one side men 
have lost sight of the necessity of moral distinctions, 
and so, by making good and evil consist merely in the 
arbitrary decree of Grod, have practically denied the 
reality of His moral attributes, and thus have, to a 
certain extent, demoralized religion. On the other 
hand, men have recognised the necessity of moral dis- 
tinctions, but have failed to perceive with sufficient 
clearness the absolute identity of that eternal necessary 
Right with the one holy Will of infinite God, and so 
have aimed at morality dissociated from religion, and, 
by severing it from all the hallowing influences of piety, 
have, as far as such a thing was possible, desecrated 
morality. A true scheme of ethics must steer clear of 
both errors. It must show the absolute unison of 
morals and religion. It need not be ashamed to prove 
that " the Law requires man to adore his God," for 



ADORATION. 



145 



that truth, (which God Himself, be it remembered, 
gives us in our moral natures to discover and obey), 
that same truth will help hereafter to strengthen its 
great converse, " God requires man to obey the Law." 
Led for ever nearer to Grod by Duty, that personal love 
and adoration which abstract Duty itself cannot win, 
but which our souls are made to give to God, shall roll 
back with tenfold force the whole strength of our natures 
into the channels of Duty, and we shall love the Right 
as God's own Eight all the more for this, because we 
have learned truly to adore God for His Righteousness. 
And this is, as I have so often repeated, the true ground 
and centre of religion, the Adoration for the Moral 
Perfection of the Supreme Being.* 

The greatness of God, His stupendous powder and 
wisdom, and the unnameable magnitude of His eternal 
and infinite existence, these are no uncommon themes 
of human thought. They are by no means, however, 
the topics of most vital interest to us as concerns our 
relation to Him. Wonder and overwhelming awe are 
the sentiments which mere greatness is calculated to 
awaken in our souls ; and though these have their use 
in affording a continual balance, a sort of centrifugal 
force to counteract the familiarizing effects of constant 

* "Epicurus says the Divine nature is the best and most excellent, 
but he will not allow it to be susceptible of any benevolence. By this 
he destroys the chief and peculiar attribute of the most perfect Being ; 
for what is better and more excellent than goodness and beneficence ? ,J 
— Cicero, De Nat. Deor., b. i. c. 44. 

H 



U6 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



approaches to God in supplication, vet in an ethical 
point of view mere wonder and awe hare not a moral 
character, and only acquire one in a secondary sense by 
such utility as that above stated. Like the delight in 
Beauty and the love of Truth (of which I shall 
presently speak), they serve to unite our souls to God 
in admiration and sympathy ichen we keep duly in pre- 
eminence of adoration the moral perfection of the All- 
Powerful, All-Beautiful, AU-TTise One. But awe 
without such moral reverence has no ethical merit 
whatever. The awe, for instance, in which our ances- 
tors stood of the imaginary devil was actually a wrong 
sentiment, implying as it did a want of faith in the 
supremacy of good and a belief in the potency of evil, 
indicative of a low state of moral energy. 

The mere greatness of God is not, then, the foundation 
of the duty of adoration for a free intelligence. "Were 
He as great as He is, and evil also, should we still adore 
him ? It would be impossible. So nobly has he Him- 
self constituted our souls, that the moment such a 
chimera rises before us as that of personified evil 
clothed in the grandeur of a God, that moment no 
sentiment save horror attaches itself to the attributes of 
mere greatness, to absolute wisdom and almighty jDOwer. 
There is no fear we lack reverence for the true God in 
thus rendering our adoration to that in Him which is of 
right adorable. He Himself has so made us that it 
must be thus. Not on His greatness, not even on His 
benefits, has He founded His claim to the homage of 



ADORATION. 



147 



beings to whom He has given the rank of moral intelli- 
gences. Man may not love the holy Lord of Good as a 
dog loves his master, or as Ecloge and Acte loved Nero. 
He has made us to adore Moral Perfection, and to 
regard other attributes with veneration only when 
possessed by a Morally Perfect Being.* 

And God is that which He has so made us to love. 
We have but to descend into the sanctuary of our souls, 
and ask the oracle therein what is the justice, the good- 
ness, the holiness we spontaneously adore, and we shall 
obtain an answer which will shadow forth our Father- 
in Heaven better than any formulas can do, and as well 
as our minds at their particular stage of growth can 
understand. As we ourselves grow more like Him, 
that ideal will continue to rise higher and higher in its 
positive conception of what justice and goodness mean ; 
but at all times it is negatively true. Nothing that we 
ever think unjust, cruel, or unholy can belong to Him 
who has made us despise and abhor whatever we feel to 
bear those characters. 

The species of definition or description of the Deity 
(if I may so call it) which we intellectually construct in 
our minds, partly from some of the data given by 

* " He (Fenelon) has not stated, and, in truth, very few do state with 
sufficient strength and precision, the moral foundation and the moral 
nature of religion. He has not taught with sufficient clearness the 
great truth that love to God is from beginning to end the love of 
virtue. He did not sufficiently feel that religion is the expansion and 
most perfect form of the moral faculty of man," — Channing, Remarks 
on the Character of Fenelon. 

H 2 



148 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



intuition, and partly from the negations furnished by 
the logical understanding — such descriptions, I say, 
always seem more or less different from that idea of 
God which rises before us wheneyer we actually pray, 
and approach Him in spirit as our moral Judge. I do 
not mean that they contradict or oppose it. If we 
follow faithfully the light granted to us, it is the 
tendency of our religious creed to harmonize itself 
continually more and more in all its parts ; and while 
our foundation is laid on the direct intuitions of God 
in our souls, we build into the superstructure of our 
temple every fact and thought hewn out of the visible 
universe by the labour of the understanding, till at last 
the building stands forth the consummation of our 
whole mental and moral natures. Nevertheless, while 
this work is incomplete, the results attained by the 
logical understanding are not always in exact coinci- 
dence with intuition, and the latter is itself often but 
imperfectly produced. I mean that, when we are 
engaged in a purely intellectual study of theology, our 
ideal of God is apt to be confused, or at all events less 
bright and pure than when we " seek His face " in 
directly religious exercises. It is a solemn subject, and 
one on which it is hard to speak with enough diffidence ; 
but I think the experience of my readers will probably 
corroborate what I woidd advance — namely, that the 
God they find in prayer is a more holy Being than they 
can place before them in any other attitude of the soul. 
A vision is opened at those hours, of such awful purity, 



ADORATION. 



149 



sucli relentless and tremendous justice, such unbounded 
unutterable love, that we seek in vain to behold it 
afterwards except in the reflection of memory. We 
never construct a Grod like Him who so reveals Himself 
to us. In prayer Intuition is the dominant faculty, 
and the other powers of the mind sink into their due 
subordination. 

In attempting to speak of the holiness of God, I shall, 
for these reasons, refer rather to the experience of my 
readers' hearts than to any logical definition of the 
Divine attributes. We may say over and over again, 
that Grod is pure and righteous and altogether holy, but 
these words only convey to us what may have been 
taught us by intuition concerning these attributes, and 
nothing beyond. We must, if we would know what 
such things are, go back to those blessed lessons, or 
(what is better far) go forward to fresh ones, and ask of 
Him " who giveth to every one liberally/' and by whom 
no son craving for the bread of life hath ever been sent 
empty away. 

Now, when we do thus obtain a transient glance into 
the abyss of our Creator's holiness, what is the sentiment 
which floods our souls ? What seems to us, then, the 
Right tribute for sinful man to offer up for ever to the 
sinless Deity ? Is it not Adoration ? Do we not then 
recognise that that mingled burst of love and venera- 
tion, and an admiration for which human language has 
no name, is the only fit emotion of the soul when it con- 
templates that unutterable sanctity ? 



150 



"RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



It has not been without perception of the true nature 
of adoration that it has been represented in the Christian 
creed as the employment of blessed souls throughout 
eternity. Of course there is error in excluding our 
other moral, intellectual, and affectional faculties from 
their proper share of growth and employment; but 
undoubtedly there is a principle of self-perpetuation of 
a very peculiar kind in adoration. The more we dwell 
on the idea of goodness, so much the more we love it ; 
the more we contemplate the nature of holiness, the 
more power our souls acquire to revere it. Grievous 
have been the errors of the creeds which have repre- 
sented such things as Repentance as if they were, or 
ought to be, perpetually progressive. These are acts of 
the soul, not sentiments. I shall speak on this subject 
more fully presently ; but here it is enough to remark, 
that the attempt to renew with increasing fervour those 
passages of the moral life which are in their nature 
intended to be accomplished at once, is fraught with 
danger to the simplicity of the heart. Such things 
cannot go on for ever. No man can weep over his 
thousandth wilful and presumptuous transgression as 
he wept when first the love of God and hatred of sin 
broke upon his soul. But he can and does exult the 
thousandth time, far more than the first, when his 
spirit soars up in adoration of the infinite holiness 
of the Supreme, while ever wider his strengthening 
sight stretches out over the boundless horizon of purity 
and love. How far this may extend in the ages of 



ADORATION. 



151 



immortality before us all, what tongue may tell, what 
heart imagine ! When we trace the progress of adora- 
tion in our souls, and note the law of its growth, it 
would seem as if the Seer of Patmos had indeed fore- 
heard the cry which, day and night, in worlds above, 
our spirit voices shall repeat deeper and with profounder 
awe and love for ever and for ever — 

" HOLY ! HOLY ! HOLY ! LORD GOD ALMIGHTY I" 

The duty of Adoration, to be rightly fulfilled, requires, 
as I have said, that we should rest it primarily upon 
the Moral Perfection of Grod. Nevertheless, this being 
recognised, and to the utmost of our soul's power duly 
adored, it is fit that all the other attributes of that 
Perfect Being should also receive from us the honour 
they deserve. 

The love of the Beautiful, the entrancing delight 
which we take in the harmonies of the visible universe, 
is a sentiment which may and ought to become a Reli- 
gious one, when we recognise that earth and sky are the 
works of that same Grod whose righteousness we worship. 
But the love of Beauty goes beyond mere admiration 
for the external object, for the form of the mountain, 
or the colouring of the forest. We feel an actual 
sympathy with the great Architect and Painter of those 
glorious things. Just as, among human beings, we are 
attracted towards the man whose tastes correspond with 
our own, and entertain feelings sometimes amounting to 
actual love for the artist who creates what we admire ; 



152 



KELIGIOTJS OBLIGATIONS. 



so, as regards God, it will be found that every mind 
deeply imbued with a sense of the beauty of nature 
has in its depths a vague love for the great Power 
which called into being this world of grace and 
grandeur.* 

Nor is there any sort of error in this love. God 
himself is manifestly pleased (if we may use such a 
phrase) with Beauty. It cannot be only a beneficent 
adaptation of our planet- home and our aesthetic tastes to 
one another, for which He has made all lovely things. 
There lies a whole world of beauty under the great 
southern oceans, where it is impossible to suppose that 
any created being who takes delight therein may ever 
behold it. Who but God has ever looked down since 
Creation's dawn into those blue depths — 
* ' Where, with a light and gentle motion, 
The fan-coral sweeps through the clear, deep sea, 
And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean 
Are bending like corn on the upland lea ?" 

* How clearly Ave see this in the great atheist poet! When the 
sorcery of genius has evoked the vision of Nature's beauty, the unbidden 
Divinity is straightway found standing in the midst, and enforcing his 
homage : — 

61 Fit throne for such a power ! Magnificent ! 
How glorious art thou, earth ! And if thou be 
The shadow of some spirit lovelier still, 
Though evil stain its work, and it should be, 
Like its creation, weak yet beautiful, 
I could fall down and worship that and thee, 
Even now my heart adoreth : Wonderful ! " 

Prometheus Unbound, act ii., sc. 3. 



ADORATION, 



153 



TTho but He to whom it was equally easy to make all 
things beautiful or hideous, endlessly various or un- 
changeably monotonous, and who has preferred to adorn 
them with such wealth of loveliness ? God must in 
some way love that same beauty which, in His tender 
kindness, He has made us also to feel and to enjoy. 
There is here between Creator and creature an actual 
sympathy, as there is between man and man, What 
the poet is to the reader, the musician to the auditor, 
the painter, sculptor, architect to him who gazes at 
their glorious works, that is Grod to the lover of nature. 
And He is even something more ; for is it not our Father 
whose Art calls forth in us a filial sympathy in creation? 
Is it not He who made us, our own all-blessed Grod who 
speaks in the roar of the magnificent storm, and in the 
voice of the joyous birds which fill the forests with 
melody? Is it not He, whose chisel shaped a the 
human form divine/ 5 and made the face of woman love- 
liest of the sights of earth ? Is it not He who has 
coloured the green earth and azure sea with their 
broad lines of beauty, He who has painted the rainbow 
and made the sunset sky blaze with His glory, and 
then has stooped down to finish into perfect grace the 
tiny shells beneath the waves, the flowrets under our 
feet ? Is it not He who has built the holy cloisters of 
the woods and piled the white Alps for His temple- 
columns, and arched over all that grandest dome whose 
lamps are the shining tiers of a thousand heavens of 
suns? Is it not our Father who has done all these 

h 3 



154 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



things, who is this mighty Artist, ay, from whom all 
human art has come, taught by Him and His glorious 
works to Phidias, and Ictinus, and Michael-Angelo, 
and Milton, and Mozart ? Well may we then sympa- 
thise in our humble love with our great Parent's joy in 
His creations. It is not only natural, it is reasonable 
and right, for man's heart so to do. " Even the Chris- 
tian's temple has a gate called ' the Beautiful,'* a gate 
by which thousands of souls may enter and wor- 
ship." 

But even this sympathy with the Beautiful, fit and 
noble as it is, is almost valueless if not duly subordi- 
nated to the still nobler sentiment of Adoration for the 
Good. A religion which begins and ends in the vague, 
though perhaps deep and tender, admiration for the 
Divine Author of Beauty, is no religion for a moral 
being. A nature still in the rank of the brutes and un- 
endowed with moral freedom might, for all we know, be 
susceptible of it. It is incapable of producing Virtue ; 
and its inadequacy as a preservative from Vice has been 
demonstrated by the flagrant wickedness of ages and 
countries devoted to the worship of the Beautiful 
under all the forms of art. The greatest dilettante 
in history is Nero ! It may, indeed, be even ques- 
tioned whether the refinement of luxury produced 
by the culture of beauty may not to thousands prove 
the Mokanna-veil of a Sensuality which, if beheld in 



Hertka. 



ADORATION. 



155 



its naked hideousness, they would have disdained to 
follow.* 

To a moral being, as I have so often repeated, the 
moral perfection of God must be the sole ground and 
motive of religion ; nay, this is so exclusively the case, 
that every other Divine attribute must be honoured by 
him precisely because it belongs to a morally Perfect 
God. Just as it would be base to worship mere power 
in a tyrant, so it would be base to worship mere artistic 
genius in a depraved fellow- creature. Nor does the 
case alter when we ascend above humanity. A beauty - 
creating devil would be no more adorable than an 
almighty devil. Power and wisdom and the creation of 
beauty are all adorable in God, because He is more than 
almighty, all- wise, all-lovely — because He is absolutely 
good. Let us but neglect this thought, and our religion 
is worthless ; let us carry it with us, and instantly Art 
becomes Religion, and the love of beauty binds us to 
God by a new tie of exquisite tenderness. It would 
seem, indeed, that minds of high aesthetic power are 

* To women in particular, with wham the senses are commonly of 
less comparative power, the easiest of all modes of declension seems to 
be that of an excessive pursuit of the beautiful to which their natures 
are predisposed, and which their ordinary education fosters, to the 
exclusion of all intellectual exercise. The narrowness of their sphere 
of thought and action still further contracts what might have remained 
ennobling in the worship of true art ; and the result is, that we find in 
thousands the exalted sentiment of the love of the Beautiful dwindled 
down to the contemptible passion of the love of costly furniture and 
fantastic dress. 



156 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS, 



peculiarly liable to temptation from this side of their 
natures. It has been long ago observed that the ten- 
dency of such minds is to a pantheism losing sight of 
that personal holy will which remains clearly before 
every soul in which religion has arisen on its proper 
ground of morality, and God has been primarily recog- 
nised and supremely adored in His moral character. 
The remedy of course must lie in the direction of the 
mischief. There is no use trying to argue a man into 
belief in the personality of a God of nature. Let his 
attention be turned to his own transgressions against 
the eternal law, let him attain a living sense of the 
existence of his own moral will by actual conflict with 
his lower passions (it is by antagonism alone that self- 
consciousness can be developed', and then he will learn 
to seek in prayer the help of that Will (like his 
own in that it is a will, unlike his own in that it knows 
no weakness'), who rules the world of spirit, to bring 
out of it at last a fairer Cosmos than the material 
universe can ever be made to show. 

On the other hand, it cannot be doubted that bigots 
have severed most cruelly from the perfect form of 
religion its lovely, albeit inferior, limb of aesthetic 
sympathy. ZS"o natural religion — that is to say, no reli- 
gion springing directly in a human heart — could ever 
do this ; but, when the fount is very far off, and the 
waters have run for ages in the clayey channels of tradi- 
tion, it happens sometimes that men divide altogether 
the God who revealed himself to their dead forefathers 



ADORATION. 



157 



from Hira who makes this living world so glorious. 
God's concern with the earth seems to them to have 
been confined to the six days in which they think He 
created it six thousand years ago, or to the time when 
He worked miracles on it eighteen centuries since. 
To them the heavens no longer " declare the glory of 
God," nor is the earth filled with His goodness, The 
beauty of nature and the inspiration in human art are 
alike foreign to their religion, and have no more con- 
nexion with it than the market-place has, in their 
opinion, a connexion with the church. It would be 
"profane" to "mix up" religion with such things. 
God's own groves and hills are only fit for heathens 
to make places of prayer to Ammon and to Ormusd. 
The Lord's House must be a cathedral or a conventicle; 
His Holy Land only the narrow desert of Palestine. 
Thus some of the most softening and hallowing influ- 
ences are excluded from religion, and many a heart 
grows dry and withered which would have blossomed 
into loveliest piety if permitted to receive the sweet 
dews of nature's beauty, and to assimilate them into 
its own life, blending, as the Creator intended, the love 
of Himself with the love of all things beautiful. 

The remarks above stated, on the relation of religion 
to the love of Beauty, hold nearly equally valid respect- 
ing its relation to the grand corresponding passion of 
the human soul, the love of Truth. As in one class of 
mind the aesthetic part of our nature takes prominent 
position, so in another class no way less noble, does the 



158 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



intellect assert itself. The love of Truth, for its own 
sake, irrespective of any possible utility to be derived 
from it, is in fact a still stronger passion than the other 
when freely indulged, and Science has always counted 
more " martyrs " than Art could rival. Here also it is 
natural for him who takes delight in the exquisite 
order and wondrous wisdom which science traces 
through all the realms of nature and of human story, 
to look up with sentiments of admiration towards the 
invisible Orderer and Designer of the whole splendid 
scheme. 

He who honours for their achievements Solon and 
Archimedes, Watt and Copernicus, is little likely to 
withhold some sentiments of reverence from the Great 
Lawgiver, Geometer, Mechanician, and Star- Orderer of 
the universe. Nor is this sentiment any way less 
rational than that of him who loves in God the source 
of Beauty. The truths which our Creator has permitted 
us to trace, and in which He makes us feel such intense 
interest and delight, are actually the products of His 
divine mind. Order, harmony in infinite variety, end- 
less adaptations to beneficent purposes — these lessons 
which science reads on earth and sky, all shadow forth 
real attributes of the Creator. Each new Truth gained 
by man is a new Thought of God revealed to him,* and 
the sympathy between his intellect and the great 
Intelligence from whom it is derived, is as veritable 

* Kepler, on discovering the law of the planetary distances, ex- 
claimed, "Oh, God, I think Thy thoughts after Thee !" 



ADORATION. 



159 



and more deep-seated than that which exists between 
him and his brother philosophers on earth. Here again, 
however, the feelings which are excited by mere intel- 
lectual communion with God, are altogether imperfect 
if not based on the moral sympathies of man's highest na- 
ture. As Power and the creation of Beauty would deserve 
no reverence if exhibited in an evil being, so neither 
would Wisdom if possessed by one who should use it for 
immoral ends, even as the mythical Satan is represented 
to do.* God's wisdom is adorable for this reason, that 
it is the wisdom of absolute goodness, and in every 
trace of it throughout the universe we read the designs 
of justice and of love. 

Exclusive devotion to the pursuit of knowledge has 
also its peculiar danger, and a worse one than attends 
exclusive worship of the beautiful ; inasmuch as 
Atheism is worse than an impersonal Pantheism. Here 
the tendency is to stop short in the study of that 
sequence of physical laws which remains unbroken 
through so vast a field of human research, that the 
attention is wholly engrossed thereby. The marvellous 
chain seems sometimes to the man of science to com- 
plete itself in a circle, girding in inexorable necessity 
the All of things. He looks not further, where a 
higher philosophy beholds it grasped by that mighty 

* "Devils, indeed, are in all mythologies endowed with peculiar 
cunning. That of the Mexicans rejoiced in the appellation of Tla- 
leatecolototl, or 'the Rational Owl.'" — See Mexico, by Brantz Mayer, 
vol. i. p. 107. 



160 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



Hand in which it is but the leash whereby God guides 
his flock of worlds.* 

Nor is it even here desirable to meet on merely 
intellectual grounds the errors which have arisen from 
the neglect of the supremacy of our moral nature. To 
argue the existence of a God with a disciple of the 
" Positive Philosophy" is to involve him and ourselves 
in a maze of metaphysical subtleties, out of which our 
mental powers afford us no means of egress. We must 
move the trial into another court, and urge our suit in 
that of the Conscience instead of that of the Intellect. 
There is no man who, when made to stand — 

s< Before the judgment -throne 
Of his own awful soul," 

does not there recognise that there is a " power un- 
known" behind that seat of conscience. It is not in 
the natural laws (great as are the evidences they bring 
of God's wisdom and immutability to him who studies 
them in connexion with his own moral and religious 
consciousness), it is not singly or even primarily in 
these that we — who are above all other characteris- 
tics moral beings — can find our moral Lord; and the 
exclusive devotion of the mind to them will alwaj^s tend 
towards atheism. Nor will this seem strange when we 
remember that the moral Will is the true Self of man, 

* See some curious remarks on the connexion between empiricism 
and atheism in Kant, Transcendental Dialectic, "Of the interest of 
Reason in the Antinomies." 



ADORATION. 



161 



the highest region of his nature, and that, therefore, 
there alone he may expect a clear consciousness of 
that Being who is Himself the supreme Will of the 
Universe, and with whose nature the earthly clay of 
man's senses and the clouds of his understanding have 
no analogy.* 

Finally, cruel as it has been for bigots to exclude the 
love of Beautv from religion, still worse has been their 
effort to shut out the love of Truth from that domain. 
It is doubtless becoming every day a more rare sacrifice ; 
but even now there are men who think, like Pascal, that 
they can best honour the God of truth by laying aside, 
to rust in uselessness, the wondrous instruments of 
reason and memory which He has given them for its 
discovery. Even now there are men who have " deter- 
mined to know nothing else " but one historic fact — 
one theologic dogma. That single page of God's great 
book (if it be, indeed, as they read it, a page thereof) 
once perused and conned, no other must ever be opened. 
God may speak to them hourly in all the voices of 
nature and human history ; but only to those few words 
which tell of the story of Judaea must they ever listen. 
The moral mistake of such a system is enormous ; for, 
even admitting the monstrous assumption that virtue is 
the immediate product of that one seed alone, still, 
weak and poor must be the virtue which grows in the 

* "Thy life, as alone the finite mind can conceive it, is self -forming, 
self -manifesting will. " — Fichte, Vocation of Man, b. iii. 



162 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



arid soil of an uncultured mind. For the sake of 
religion itself no one can hesitate which to choose as the 
best soldier in the service : the soul which stands armed 
at all points with learning's glorious spoils, brave with 
the courage of mental freedom, and strong and agile in 
its well-trained powers ; or the starveling soul which 
has chained itself to its solitary pillar of a dogma, and 
lies there naked to every shaft of ridicule or argument, 
and crippled in every cramped and stiffened limb of its 
long-fettered faculties. 

Let it be remembered that in thus defending the 
ardent pursuit of knowledge, I do not do so on the 
grounds of the Happiness to be derived from it. 
Though it be in truth the most unmixed, the most 
enduring, and the most irreproachable of human 
delights, the one before which almost all other earthly 
joys grow stale and tedious;* yet it is not for this 
cause that I would save the student's lamp from the 
bigot's ruthless hand. It is because the love of abstract 
Truth is the passion which, above all others, tends most 
directly to help the great end of our creation. Though 
our affections are needful to warm our hearts, and our 
aesthetic tastes to refine them, it is only through the 
intellect that they can be enlarged— that their capacity 
for virtue and religion can be increased. It is as a 

* " Et puis il n'y eut jamais homme de ceux qui sout enamourez 
de scavoir qui ait en ce monde assoui son desir de la connaissance de 
verite et de la contemplation de ce qui est." — Plutarque, (Euvres 
Morales, in fol. 1604, p. 293. 



ADORATION. 



163 



means to that great purpose, and always keeping pre- 
dominantly in view the moral perfection exhibited in 
every trace of our Creator's wisdom, that we must 
rightly cherish this noble desire of knowledge. Thus 
may we fitly train our mental powers for our Master's 
glorious work. Thus may the love of the true, equally 
with, and perhaps even more firmly than, the love of 
the beautiful, bind us to the throne of God, with that 
triple cord whose golden strand is the passion far nobler 
than them both, the one sole interest and desire of 
man's highest nature — the love of the good. 



164 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



SECTION III. 

PRAYER. 

The third great branch of religious duty is Prayer. 
As I have already remarked, it does not proceed directly 
from the abstract Rightfulness of the case, as do Thanks- 
giving and Adoration, but takes its place as a Religious 
Duty more as the religious means of assisting the per- 
formance of both Personal and Social duties. In the 
Theory of Morals I maintained "that the law of 
spirit is, that light and strength are bestowed by God 
on man, according as the latter places himself further 
from or nearer to their source.* The plant which is 
sickly, weak and white, growing in the darkness, 
acquires health and verdure when we bring it into 
the sunshine. ' The magnetic bar which has lost its 
power, regains it when we hang it in the plane of the 
meridian.' " Thus (whatever other prayer may be) the 
prayer for Spiritual good is the direct mode of obtaining 
assistance to our virtue, in accordance with the fixed 
laws of Providence. Every act of religious worship, 

* ' ' The Supreme Being seems to be distant from those who have no 
wish to attain a knowledge respecting Him, and He seems to be very 
near those who feel a wish to know Him." — Ishopanishad, 1st chapter 
of the Yajur Veda. 



PRAYER. 



165 



and also every act of social duty, is indirectly the means 
of performing personal duty, by perfecting our natures 
in the culture of the various virtues of gratitude, vene- 
ration, benevolence, &c. ; but the particular act of 
spiritual prayer is the direct "means of grace," as 
bringing to our virtue an external Help, of whose value 
and extent it is difficult for us to form a sufficiently high 
estimate. 

It will be seen here that I assume it to be proved 
that there is an actual answer given by God to our 
requests for His assistance. I assume that the strength 
which comes to us in prayer is not merely a subjective 
phenomenon, the strength acquired by the Will by its 
own act of exercise.* If any one demur to this assump- 
tion, I have no answer for him but this. The fact is a 
fact of consciousness, which in the nature of the case 
must rest on the experience of each individual, and he 
may, at his choice, attach more or less credibility, 
according as his philosophy may dictate, to such expe- 
rience of it as his own life may have presented. The 
light, and warmth, and vital strength imparted by Grod 
to the soul, must for ever remain not only imperceptible 
to the bystander, but even to the man himself, so 
blended with the subjective accretion of strength which 
his own (necessarily simultaneous) effort will produce, 
that it can hardly be analyzed or defined. We feel it, 
believe it, bless Grod for it sometimes with thanksgiving 
unutterable. That is all we know — all man can know 
* See this fallacy admirably refuted in The Soul, chap. iii. 



166 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



on the subject, except that such objective reality of 
Divine Aid was a priori credible. " Grod is a spirit — 
omnipresent and omniactive — He must therefore be 
always present and always active in the souls of his 

creatures As Grod fills all space, so He must fill 

all spirit. As He influences and constrains unconscious 
and necessitated matter, so He inspires and helps free 
and conscious man. There is a natural supply for spi- 
ritual as for corporeal wants. As we have bodily senses 
to lay hold on and supply bodily wants, so we have spi- 
ritual faculties to lay hold on Grod and supply spiritual 
wants/'* It is not only our bodies which live by the 
bread He daily gives, but our spirits also which must 
receive sustenance from His aid. The higher our powers 
are, the nearer they must be to Him, the more capable 
of contact with Him ; our bodies first, then our intel- 
lects, then our moral and religious affections, rising up 
purer and higher, till at last the contact becomes con- 
scious in the awful communion of intensest prayer > 
All this is natural, normal. It is not a miracle that the 
Omnipresent is close to us — that the Omniactive moves 
our hearts. It is not strange that the Infinite Father, 
who bears us in His everlasting arms, should supply 
the cravings of our immortal souls while He feeds the 
ravens and gives the young lions their prey. It would 
be a miracle — it would be as strange as terrible were it 
otherwise. 

The argument, then, stands thus : " He who doubts 

* Discourses of Religion, by Theodore Parker, p. 174. 



PRAYER. 



167 



that God hears prayer denies that we have " proof" of 
the fact. But what " proof" would satisfy him? If 
he say " none," this would imply that there is an 
essential absurdity in the case ; but we must then call 
on him to point out the absurdity, since we do not see 
it. But if he admit that the thing is not in itself 
absurd and self-contradictory, then it seems to me he 
cannot ask any other proof than exactly that which 
abounds — viz., the unanimous testimony of spiritual per- 
sons to the efficacy of prayer. He may reply, " Yes, that 
is the heart acting on itself ;" but he might deal exactly 
in the same way with the evidence of sense. Perhaps 
there is no outer world, and our internal sensations are 
the universe ! Syllogistic proof of an outer world will 
never be gained, nor yet syllogistic proof that God 
exists, or listens to prayer."* 

Assuming the objective validity of spiritual prayer, 
the obligation of its use is seen to possess a religious 
force peculiar to itself. It would seem as if here God 
had set afresh the seal of His approval on the perform- 
ance of human duty, and had crowned it by a stupendous 
honour. What awful mystery lies in this " hearing of 
prayer!" That feeble incense, even if it ascended 
ceaselessly from our burning hearts, how should it ever 
reach those infinite heavens, and bring back thence the 
blessing from the " Majesty above ?" 

Of course all duties are Divine commands. The right- 
eous will of God willeth that all things right should be 

* The Soul, p. 120, 2nd edit. 



168 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



done by every moral agent in the universe. As regards 
our religious duties, then, God desires that we thank 
Him as our Benefactor, and adore him as personified 
Righteousness. But there is nothing in this view of the 
Divine Lawgiver to warrant us in anticipating that 
marvellous boon which ever and anon is given to bless 
and consecrate, beyond all human language, the prayer 
for light and grace. It is in the true Fatherhood of 
God, in the omnipresence of His loving spirit through 
all the spirits He has made, that we find first the hope 
and then the explanation of this great mystery which 
lays on prayer the crown of such inexpressible sanctity 
and glory. To the soul which has reached that stage 
of spiritual life wherein such culmination of worship 
takes place, it is revealed that God does actually hear, 
accept, and bless — ay, and in a certain sense (if we 
may dare to symbolize His awful nature) desire the 
prayer of His child. It is His directly revealed will 
that we should thus address Him. All the rest of the 
moral law, and this also, He has written in the intui- 
tions of our reason, nay, made the natural law of our 
true selves. But to this special duty He has, as it were, 
again, afresh, personally affixed the token of His appro- 
bation. It thus becomes a duty doubly incumbent on 
us ; we have learned it in two Divine lessons. Or 
rather let us say, that it is a glorious privilege, which 
we hold by a double tenure, and which God, who gave 
it, has ratified and confirmed by a grant of most un- 
speakable honour. Is it not marvellous to think that 



PRAYER. 



169 



our hearts can ever be dead to an appeal like this ? 
God, the Almighty Lord of all the worlds, desires the 
prayers of man, and man knows it, and he does not 
pray ! 

I know that it would seem fitting, in a didactic 
treatise like the present, to proceed at this point, after 
having laid down the grounds of the duty of prayer, to 
explain what are its proper objects and limits — what 
we may and what we may not ask of God, and how 
those blessings which we receive can be bestowed on 
us by Him in accordance with the laws of mind and 
matter. I cannot proceed far on this course. 

The following remarks must suffice on this almost 
inapproachable theme :— 

1st. We ought not to pray for anything which a 
sound philosophy forbids us to entertain a reasonable 
hope that God will grant. 2nd. Nor for anything 
which piety forbids that we should desire Him to 
bestow. Let us see what results follow from these 
principles. 

Does philosophy warrant us to expect that God will 
grant any prayer for 'physical good — for abundant har- 
vests, favourable weather, recovery from sickness, or so 
on ? It seems to me that if we can safely form an 
opinion on any subject of the kind, it is precisely this : 
that it is not to be expected that God will attend to 
such prayers. The immutability of natural laws is 
demonstrated by every sound method of reasoning. 
It results a priori from the nature of God, whose 

I 



170 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



wisdom to construct His machine, and power to sustain 
its order, are both opposed to the hypothesis of a 
changeable law. It results a posteriori from the in- 
duction of the whole volume of physical science, in no 
page of which a trace of mutability has ever become 
visible. 

The truth of this is so obvious, that no one does 
consciously ask for a change in a physical law : from the 
moment he recognises that there is a law in the case in 
question, he ceases to pray. No man now dreams of 
asking that the sun should rise at midnight to suit his 
convenience, or that the lead he throws into a crucible 
should come out gold. Here it is known clearly enough 
that a law must be broken (or, as it is popularly said, 
" a miracle wrought ") for the prayer to be fulfilled. 
But it so happens that the laws of the two sciences 
of meteorology and hygienics are more obscure at our 
present stage of knowledge than -either astronomy or 
chemistry. Whereas the law by which the sun rises at 
its proper hour is sufficiently understood, the law by 
which certain conditions of the atmospheric gases 
produce rain is only capable of statement in gene- 
ralized formulae which do not admit of specific predic- 
tion of results (a defect owing partly to the incomplete 
state of the science, and partly to the variety of 
conditions to be taken into consideration and the 
difficulty of their precise constatement). There is, 
therefore, left in the minds of the majority a space for 
vagueness when they contemplate such a thing as 



PRAYER. 



171 



prayer for rain. Because they do not see all the causes 
at work in the case, they forget that they must exist, 
and they imagine there is a sort of interregnum, 
affording room for their prayers to move the effect 
independently of the natural cause. A man does not 
pray for rain actually to fall from a cloudless sky ; but 
he supposes that clouds will be gathered, and sent over 
his field, and that then the rain will fall " in accordance 
with the laws of nature." He does not see how clouds 
are gathered, else it would seem to him that to ask that 
the action of caloric on hydrogen gas should be altered 
from the natural one would be quite as " miraculous " 
as that rain should fall without a cloud. Of course, if 
it were going to rain without his prayers, if the atmo- 
spheric influences working, perhaps months ago, in the 
Pacific, were bringing about a fall of rain in England, 
his prayers are superfluous. He prays, therefore, on 
the presumption that it will not rain unless he prays. 
The prayer, consequently, is as distinctly one for what 
he calls a " miracle " as if he asked for the sun to roll 
back in the heavens instead of for the meteorologic 
phenomena to be thrust out of their natural course. 
To make my meaning more clear, let us take an 
example. A. B. lives at Dover, and his wheat-crop is 
failing from drought. He has been taught that in such 
cases it is lawful to pray for Divine aid, and he does so. 
What is his prayer ? He does not simply pray that his 
crop be saved, and imagine that God may do so without 
rain. No ; he knows there is a natural krw that wheat 

i 2 



172 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



requires moisture for its growth. He prays, therefore, 
distinctly for rain, assuming, be it observed, that there 
is not a law regulating the fall of rain, like the growth 
of wheat. Now let us suppose that a cloud hangs over 
Calais, but the wind at Dover is from the north. Will 
the wind change at A. B/s prayer, and send the cloud 
over his field? But that wind arose from certain 
atmospheric changes six weeks before in the Arctic Sea, 
and there are no causes to produce a south wind in its 
place. Two miracles are wanted now. And if we go 
back through the chain of causes of storms, calms, 
drought and moisture, we shall always find that some 
link must be broken if A. B.'s fields are to receive rain 
which they woidd not have received without his prayer. 
To pray, then, for rain is not only as foolish as to pray 
that a wheat- crop should thrive without moisture, but 
it involves the additional absurdity of pointing out to 
God how He can fulfil our wish (i.e., save the crop), by 
an interference with His laws involving a much wider 
scope of consequences than the miracle of making a 
field of wheat grow in drought. 

I have minutely examined this one case, because it 
may fairly stand as a sample for all prayers for physical 
good. If our science were complete, we should recognise 
that every department of the world of sense is equally 
ruled by fixed laws. Alchemists of old times may have 
prayed for the transmutation of lead to gold, because 
they did not believe it was against a natural law ; but 
what should we think of Faraday putting up prayers 



PRAYER. 



173 



for the same purpose? In like manner, a sick man, 
swallowing a medicine of whose nature he was ignorant, 
might pray that it should restore his health ; but, if he 
knew that the liquid was a deadly dose of strychnine, 
would he dream that any prayers could make it 
beneficial ? If we pass in review the whole series of 
such supplications known to us as offered habitually 
by individuals or churches, we shall find that it 
invariably happens that prayer begins where science 
stops, and that as science advances prayer retreats. As 
soon as we clearly discern the physical cause for a 
desired effect, that moment we cease to pray for the 
effect, but go back to the cause ; and if the cause of this 
cause be unknown, or imperfectly known (as in the case 
of the cause of the rain which causes the good harvest), 
we pray for that cause, till we discover that it also 
is only another, and equally immutable link in the 
universal chain. In future ages, when epidemics and 
meteorology, therapeutics and political economy, are 
known as we now know astronomy and chemistry, 
men will smile at the idea of praying against cholera, 
and potato-blight, and dry weather, and sudden death, 
and war, and famine, just as we smile at the notion of 
praying against the changes of the moon, or entreating 
that strychnine should prove wholesome. 

But there rises an objection more decisive than this 
of its inutility, against the practice of praying for 
physical good. The second test of the lawfulness of 
a prayer proves still more unfavourable. Does piety 



174 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



towards God permit us to desire that He will grant 
prayer for physical good ? 

Let us analyze what is involved in the notion of a 
change in a physical event being wrought by God in 
compliance with prayer. 

I assume it to have been proved, in the first part of 
this Essay, that the primary end of creation is the 
Virtue of rational free agents. The secondary end of 
creation (which is always postponed when needful to the 
primary) is the Happiness of rational and irrational 
beings. On this system the Laws of Matter are of 
course assumed to have been expressly fitted to for- 
ward these great ends of creation. Their primary 
purpose must be to afford a ground and work-field 
for virtue ; and their secondary purpose, the produc- 
tion of the happiness of both rational and irrational 
beings. 

Two theories are commonly propounded respecting 
the particular results of these laws of matter. The first 
of these maintains that it is only the general results of 
the laws which are absolutely good, and that God has 
made each law for the sake of such general good results, 
albeit, some of the particular results are exceptionally 
evil. The reason why He permits of the evil particular 
results is, that the immutability of the law is needful to 
afford a fixed warp wherein alone human virtue can 
work. The second theory asserts that it is not only 
the general, but every particular result of each physical 
law which was foreseen by God from the first, and was 



PRAYER. 



175 



directly intended by Him as good when He gave that 
law to matter. 

Trie first hypothesis has been framed, I venture to 
think, under a limited view of the Divine wisdom, and 
with too much leaning towards the error of supposing 
human happiness an equal object of God's design with 
human virtue. If we truly recognise the fact that 
suffering is necessary to trial, and trial to virtue, and 
that Grod can never hesitate to permit the suffering 
which shall conduce to the virtue of His creatures, there 
will be no a priori reason for supposing the apparently 
harsh particular results of physical law to be opposed 
to the Divine plan, unless we deem it impossible for 
Grod to have constructed those laws, and the world in 
which they act, in such manner as to meet all the con- 
tingencies involved in human freedom. This is obviously 
a most unwarrantable assumption. Machines of human 
invention are capable of showing the principle of com- 
pensation to an immense extent, and of adapting their 
action to varieties of temperature, moisture, &c, without 
loss of accuracy.* To suppose that the Omniscient 
could not have made His chronometer of the universe 
to keep His time because of the variations which (within 
such narrow limits) He permits man's free will to pro- 
duce, is surely anything but philosophical. The suffer- 
ing of the irrational and unmoral creatures affords, 
I confess, an a posteriori presumption that there is 
in the nature of things an inherent impossibility of 
* See Oersted's Soul in Nature, p. 173. 



176 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



constructing laws which should be immutable, and vet 
whose every result should be beneficial. It is hard to 
think that God actually designs the pain of the wild 
creatures who are mutilated or slowly devoured by their 
enemies, and yet have no connection with man, whose 
freedom might be involved in the transaction. On the 
whole, and as a general law, it is quite clear that suffer- 
ing is indeed, as it has been well called, only the " girdle 
of the brutes a sense given them to preserve their 
lives and the integrity of their bodies. If pain were 
unknown to the beasts, the length of their pleasures in 
the enjoyment of life would be curtailed enormously. 
Thus its general purpose is seen to be in full harmony 
with the Divine benevolence. But what of the par- 
ticular ? I answer that if we exclude those sufferings 
of the beasts caused by man (for the high end of whose 
virtue and its necessary substructure of freedom the 
happiness of the brutes must of course be postponed, 
even as their whole existence is only the complement of 
the great scheme of which that virtue is the object), 
then the remainder of suffering belonging to the animal 
creation seems, in all cases, to resolve itself into a more 
or less speedy death. Xow I cannot but think that we 
are far too slightly acquainted with the nature of the 
feelings immediately preceding dissolution in men, and, 
d fortiori, in animals, to be able to decide whether slow 
deaths or quick deaths are least painful. Many of the 
convulsions and other piteous-seeming symptoms are, as 
we know, unaccompanied by any suffering ; and of the 



PRAYER. 



177 



various degrees of it which may be endured by the crea- 
tures which die of hunger, of cold, or of mutilation, it is 
quite impossible for us to form a judgment, so as to 
warrant us in asserting that the accidental death which 
we behold be in reality any worse than the natural 
decay for which our ignorant mercy would have pre- 
served it. There are, it must be admitted, some diffi- 
culties in the case ; still, I cannot think they are suffi- 
cient to form grounds for the immense assumption that 
God did not intend and could not avoid the sufferings of 
the poor birds in the snow, or of the lamb devoured by 
the wolf. As I remarked in a former volume {Intuitive 
Morals), " through what stages life and consciousness, 
and self-consciousness, may be evolved by the Creator, 
is a mystery at present quite beyond our reach and 
the share of suffering in conducing to higher results 
than as yet we dream of for the brutes may chance 
one day to reveal to us reasons for the pangs of the 
linnet and the lamb, which shall fill us with fresh 
adoration for those tender mercies of our God which 
are now and ever " over all His works." 

Without pressing this controversy further, however, 
I proceed to observe, that whichever theory concerning 
the physical laws be actually true, the bearing of either 
of them is of nearly equal weight against the fitness of 
prayer for physical good. On the first hypothesis it is 
clear that God definitely wills the immutability of His 
natural laws — wills it so strongly that He never permits 
them to be broken, even when their results are not 

i 3 



178 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



absolutely in accordance with. His designs — wills it 
because He sees that their inviolability is a greater good 
than could be compensated by any advantage arising 
from interference with particular evil results. Here, 
then, to pray for change is directly to pray against 
God's vjill to keep his laws inviolate. On the second 
hypothesis the same view arises not less clearly. God 
is now recognised to will directly each result of each 
law, because that result is absolutely just and good. 
Here, then, also, to pray for change is directly to pray 
against God's will that such a particular event should 
take place. 'Now, to what does this amount ? Of 
course, in each case, to a prayer that God will change 
His will, either in the matter of the inviolability of His 
law, or of the event in question. But why does God 
will anything ; say, for instance, that the physical laws 
shoidd be immutable, or that a certain sick man should 
die ? Does He will such things arbitrarily, as a mere 
matter of fancy ? Even man must always have some 
motive of choice — either the eternal Right, self-legis- 
lated by his higher self, or the gratification of some 
desire blindly sought by his lower nature. God's sole 
motive can never be other than that everlasting Right, 
of which His infinite and perfect will is absolutely the 
personification, and which with Him is never drawn 
aside by any lower nature's desires whatsoever. To say, 
then, that God wills this or that event is tantamount to 
saying that that event is the most just and the most 
good event possible in the case. He wills it simply 



PRAYER. 



179 



because it is so. Now comes His creature man, and 
prays, " 0 God, do not will that most just and most 
good event, but will the opposite one." If God were 
to grant such prayer, would He be equally just and 
equally good? TYliat would become of His infinite 
and absolute attributes of justice and goodness, which 
for ever know, and choose, and perform the absolute 
right throughout the universe ? Man is actually pray- 
ing God to be less than perfect — to derogate from His 
own goodness — to turn aside the wheels of the tremen- 
dous justice of the heavens, because he has fallen in 
their path and must suffer a pang as they pass over 
him. Is this piety ? Is this true love of God p* Of 
all the thoughts which can torture a religious soul, 
there is not one so dreadful as that which suggests a 
doubt of the absolute perfection, the everlasting immu- 
tability, of God's justice and God's goodness. "2so," 
it cries ; " let my heart be ground into the dust ; let 
the universe, if need be, crash in final ruin ; but let 
God reign over all, perfect and righteous for ever- 
more." 

The truth is, I believe, that no one ever does pray 
for physical good after recognising the true relation of 
the Divine Will to the laws of nature. Just as the 
Philosophical error of believing in the efficacy of such 
prayers rests on imperfect knowledge of the sequence of 

* Yet prayers like these are commonly called Devotions ! — " Devo- 
tions," in sooth, in which we devote no fraction of our desires to God, 
"but "beg Him to give up His will to ours ! 



180 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



cause and effect obtaining in all departments of nature, 
so the Religious error of desiring to change the Divine 
Will rests on an imperfect apprehension of the Moral 
Perfection of God. The man whose science is im- 
mature imagines thr.t there are some departments of 
nature wherein, as he does not trace it, the rigid chain 
of law may not be binding. The man whose religion is 
immature imagines that there are departments of the 
Will of God determined, like his own lower nature, by 
motives independent of moral ones, and not necessarily 
involving questions of justice or goodness to be infringed 
by a change wrought therein by his prayers. So soon 
as it is recognised that God never does anything but 
because it is right, so soon every soul retaining a spark 
of true piety must cease to pray, and at least endeavour 
to cease to desire that God should alter these acts 
which are determined only by His righteousness. In a 
word, he ceases to try to turn God's Will (which is 
always right) to his desires (which must be, in so far 
as they are opposed to it, wrong), but, on the contrary, 
bends his strength to subdue all his desires to God's 
will, and sums up his whole Litany in one sole prayer : 
" Father, not my will, but Thine, be done." 

I know it will be said that in all this I have much 
misrepresented the case of Prayer for earthly good. I 
know that the thousands of excellent persons who use it 
daily never do so with the consciousness that their act is 
such as I describe. On the contrary, they always think 
that they pray in " full submission to the Divine Will." 



PRAYER. 



181 



But this is mere self-deception. Of two things one 
must hold in every given case. Either God would do 
what we desire without our prayer, or He would not do 
so. If He loould, prayer is a superfluity, and all its 
earnestness and agony of supplication must become im- 
possible to the man who understands that he is only 
praying in case what he desires will take place without 
this prayer. If He would not, prayer is, as I have 
described, an attempt to persuade God to do that which 
He does not will. One only hypothesis remains ; 
namely, that our prayer has already been taken into 
account ; that God, foreseeing it from all eternity, has 
given it a place among the causes of events, and will 
grant to our prayers that which His physical laws 
accomplish, they having been arranged so to do in pre- 
vision of the prayer.* I confess that this hypothesis 
possesses much plausibility ; nevertheless,* I venture to 
think it fails to offer a satisfactory solution of the diffi- 
culty. It is quite true that there is no past or present 
with God. The prayer we say to-day has been said, to 
all intents and purposes, from all eternity, so far as He 
is concerned. But it cannot be so with us. Our will 
that this or that event take place is a will in time. We 
must be actually wishing at a given moment that 
God's Will should be done, or should not be done, in 

* "Quand un fidele addresse a present a Dieu ime priere digne d'etre 
exaucee, il ne faut pas s'imaginer que cette priere ne parvient qu'a 
present a la connaissance de Dieu. II a deja entendu cette priere depuis 
l'eternite." — Euler, Lettres a un Princesse cV AUemagne, vol. i. p. 357. 



182 



UELXGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



the case in question. As I have said before, the prayer 
must be either a superfluous one, or against God's Will. 
Thus, if the Philosophical objection be done away with, 
the Religious will remain in full force. But the philo- 
sophical objection itself is not so easily disposed of. 
God has, indeed, foreseen our prayer when He fixed 
His laws, just as He has foreseen every other thread of 
the great tissue through which they work their way 
and fulfil His behests. But how ought our prayer to 
have influenced His decrees ? Have we not recognised 
that all God does is done because it is absolutely the 
just act, the good act in the case in question ? To 
revert to our old example : if God causes A. B/s crops 
to fail, must it not be because it is just and good they 
should do so, and because it would be less just and less 
good that they should prosper ? How can A. B.'s 
prayer, though foreseen from all eternity, alter the ever- 
lasting Law of Eight, or God's Will to perform that 
law to the uttermost ? 

Here, also, there is a theory to answer me, and it is 
one which concerns importantly the whole end and 
purpose of prayer : it is the doctrine of the Forgiveness 
of Sins. A. B.'s sins (it will be said) deserved that his 
crops should fail, so that it was just and good they 
should do so. But A. B.'s prayer and repentance 
having obtained the remission of his sins, it is now just 
and good that his crops should prosper.* 

* ' 1 We humbly beseech Thee, that although we for our iniquities 
have worthily deserved a plague of rain and waters, yet upon our true 



PRAYEK, 



183 



I shall discuss this subject of the Remission of Sins 
at full length in the ensuing Section. It will there, I 
hope, be demonstrated to the reader's satisfaction, that 
the doctrine, in any sense applicable to the averting of 
physical calamity, is wholly untenable. The Retribu- 
tion which the eternal principles of justice affix to every 
transgression must inevitably, sooner or later, be in- 
flicted on the transgressor by Him to whom it belongs 
to execute that justice throughout the worlds He rules. 
The perfection of the Divine character requires that 
there should be no retrocession from such complete 
retribution, and experience demonstrates that actually 
the order of God's Providence on earth holds its un- 
broken course in the punishment even of the most 
sincerely repentant offender. 

Thus, I believe, every hypothesis on which prayer 
for physical good can be supported is open to refutation, 
and the practice is shown to be neither philosophically 
nor religiously defensible. 

Let us now, however, turn to the subject of prayer 
for spiritual good, and examine whether it may better 
stand the tests by which we have tried the lawfulness 
of that prayer which would change the order of natural 
events. 

In the first place, it is to be observed that neither the 
philosophic nor religious objections against other prayer 

repentance Thou wilt send us such weather as that we may receive 
the fruits of the earth," &c. — Prayer for Fair Weather, English 
Liturgy, 



184 



KELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



bear upon this in any way. There is no law to be 
infringed when God gives His grace to those who ask 
Him, but only a law to be fulfilled, just as when a man 
suffaring from cold walks to the fireside/ or when a 
withering plant is placed under the rain. There is no 
question of " miracle " in the case. The intuition of 
the noblest human souls has taught us, and all experi- 
ence has ratified their teaching, that " every one that 
asks " of God light, and strength, and patience, receives 
them; and that to him that knocks at the " wicket gate" 
of the true path of right, " to him it is opened." ]STor 
does the strictest philosophy oppose in any way this doc- 
trine* As I endeavoured to show in a former volume 
Intuitive Morals, chap, iii.), the highest schools of meta- 
physics recognise distinctly that there is a world of 
realities behind the world of appearances which alone our 
senses perceive, and that the fixed chain of necessary 
sequence, which binds all things in the world of sense, 
cannot bind the supersensible world, whereof (as well as 
of the lower) man is an inhabitant by right of his two- 
fold nature. In that upper realm of realities man is free, 
and from it he descends as an agent into the world of 
appearances. Nothing hinders, therefore, that in the 
supersensible world God should hear and answer prayer 
for supersensible blessings. God is Himself a Super- 
sensible Being ; and so also, in his highest nature, is 
man. Creator and creature meet then in that world 
where the chain of physical laws has never been ex- 
tended. It becomes no longer a question, " How God, 



PRAYER. 



185 



consistently with law, could grant prayers but rather, 
How there can be any sort of severance between the 
infinite and finite spirits, so as to leave intact the free- 
dom of the creature who must be, if we may so express 
it, permeated by the Divine Spirit, living and moving 
in it at all times. All that we can see is that God has 
reserved in some degree such freedom for us. It is 
when we ask it that His aid is most surely given. .Then 
descends on man that awful, unutterable benediction, 
that influx of God's light and grace, of which no 
human tongue may fitly speak, which it is not the 
office of our intellects to scrutinize, but of our hearts 
to adore. 

Thus the double power of the true self, to Know the 
Eight and to Do the Eight, becomes, by God's help, at 
once clear and strong. We are " strengthened with 
might by God's Spirit in the inner man." * No philoso- 
phy need or can afford a better definition of the 
mystery. 

Let us pause here for a moment to contemplate the 
immense, the unspeakable importance and value of this 
wondrous gift wherewith the love and condescension of 
the Almighty has endowed us. It is hard enough to 
conceive that there is such a thing, actually, as a direct 
instrument of intercourse between the soul of a creature, 
creeping out his poor, weak, sinful life upon this dust- 
spot of a world, and Him, the unnamable, uncompre- 
hended Spirit, whose Being fills the heaven of heavens. 
* Eph. iii. 16. 



186 



TLELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS, 



Men admit, perhaps, theoretically, the objective validity 
of prayer — that Grod does actually hear and answer it — 
but they stop short commonly, in practice, at the con- 
sideration of its subjective utility. The first is too 
great and wonderful a thought to be often realized. 
They pray under its impression sometimes : no man 
really prays at all except in the faith that there is some- 
thing, more in prayer than a self-acting spiritual exer- 
cise. But few of us can keep clearly in mind at other 
hours the stupendous fact that we possess a means of 
direct personal access to Gfod, through which it is at our 
own choice to ask and obtain from Him the very high- 
est gifts for which our souls can crave. When we do 
believe this, practically and continuously, a new life for 
a man must begin. It must always, however, I suppose, 
remain a source of wonder that such things should be 
true. The very extent of the power of prayer, the 
sudden flood of light and life which it opens sometimes 
to the soul, is so vast a matter, that a fresh sort of 
scepticism springs up in contemplating it. I do not 
doubt that many of the errors current among Christians 
concerning " Election/' and " Predestination to Life/' 
have their source in the natural incredulity of the 
religious man's mind at the immense results arising 
from an act apparently so poor and weak as his own 
prayer. Like the child which has held a powerful 
burning-glass in its feeble hand, and is amazed at the 
fire which ensues, he exclaims, "/have not done it: I 
could not do it ! My act could never have brought 



PRAYER, 



187 



from heaven the flame which has changed my whole 
nature : God must have done it all independently of my 
wretched prayer, and the difference between me and 
those who have not felt this fire of heaven must be all 
His ' Election ' and 6 Predestination/ " 

But these things are not so. God has made prayer 
the " means " of an immeasurable " grace ; " and He 
has laid open those means to every one of His children. 
Sooner or later we shall all pray, pray with spirit, 
strength, and " find what comes " of such prayer. 

That any act of religious aspiration should be 
efficacious or acceptable, it appears that only two things 
are necessary — not unhesitating and entire faith ; for 
that is one of the gifts which prayer must bring rather 
than take — not by any means a belief " keeping whole 
and undefiled " a series of intellectual propositions ; for 
there is but one which concerns prayer at all, namely, 
that there is a God who may hear us — not absolute 
virtue ; for it is to help us to this that prayer is chiefly 
given — but these two things : sincere Earnestness, 
and a will struggling to obey in all things the Will and 
Law of God. 

Prayer which is not really Earnest, as earnest as our 
poor wavering hearts, and wandering thoughts, and 
imperfect consciousnesses can make it, is not prayer at 
all. It is a talking to the winds, not to God. The 
arrow which is to shoot into heaven must fly from the 
bow strained to its very utmost tension. After all, if 
we understand rightly what we are to ask of God, there 



188 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



is not very much, to be said at any one given hour of 
prayer; and the case is not merely that one single 
fervent ejaculation is worth as much as pages mumbled 
over in drowsy half-attention, but that it only is prayer, 
and the rest is all heathenism and solemn mockery. 
People do not mean it so, and doubtless Grod forgives 
the sins of our stupidity no less than of our unavoidable 
ignorance ; but in reality nothing can well be conceived 
more truly irreligious than the common habit of mum- 
bling over the most solemn invocations to the Almighty, 
asking Him to listen to our supplications for the most 
stupendous of gifts, while the whole time we afford the 
subject precisely that fraction of our mental, moral, and 
affectional powers which ordinarily suffices to sing a 
lullaby to a child ! We are all agreed on this point. 
Even preachers who have just read out prayers so 
prolix that scarcely the spiritual wing of a seraph could 
follow them in one continuous soar are ready enough to 
lash the languid life of our devotions. But if the in- 
attention be not quite so gross as that I have described, 
still the whole system of prayer which I believe to be usu- 
ally followed almost necessitates a minor degree of it. Such 
a multitude of requests are to be proffered consecutively, 
prayers for all sorts of blessings on everybody are so 
mixed up with much praise and little thanksgiving, all 
to be uttered at the one hour of worship, that it is quite 
impossible that the human mind, in its present consti- 
tution, can grasp them all. How much the partial in- 
attention thus rendered unavoidable leads to habitual 



PRAYER. 



189 



drowsiness and carelessness, no one can doubt. It were 
greatly to be wished that it could be impressed on us 
all, that, as prayer is the act of most majestic dignity 
attached to our manhood, so it is the most vigorous 
exercise of which our souls are capable. Not till the 
soul acts with all its strength, strains its every faculty, 
does prayer begin. To lay out, then, schemes for a 
cultus, private or public, wherein the natural difficulty of 
such high exercise is doubled by varying and repeated 
demands, is obviously absurd. We are wearied out by 
being marched round and round the temple, and are 
actually discouraged from ascending the steep steps and 
pressing through the portal. 

It will be said, " If nothing less than this vehement 
action of the soul be really prayer, then we cannot pray 
so often as we desire. ' 9 I answer, unhesitatingly, no- 
thing less deserves to be called by the same name as that 
most awful passage of mortal experience ; but it does 
not follow that nothing else is worship. 

By-and-by I shall speak of that indirect worship 
wherein it is to be hoped all life at last may merge for 
us, wherein not only we shall know that — 

" Laborare est orare, " 

but all feeling shall be holy feeling, all thought shall 
be pure, loving, resigned, adoring thought ; so that at 
every moment of existence we shall " glorify God in our 
bodies and in our spirits, which are God's/' But, even 
as regards direct worship, it is to be believed that when 



190 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



we are really incapable of true prayer, God is not with- 
out a blessing in His band (though, of course, a lesser 
one than that highest communion) for the soul which 
would fain offer such sacrifices as it possesses. It is 
often impossible, from physical weariness, or pain, or 
mental anxiety and grief, to feel much spiritual hunger 
and thirst at hours when yet a prudent regard for the 
sustenance of our better life has made us resolve that we 
will always seek to strengthen our souls with God's 
bread of life. If we cannot at such times raise our 
spirits in that strong upward flight which constitutes 
true prayer, it may suffi.ce that we lift our eyes to our 
Father in that longing or trusting gaze which may yet 
be worship.* 

But one thing is clear— that whenever we attempt to 
approach God at all, we must do so with all the earnest - 

* How beautifully this worship of repose is described in Coleridge's 
Pains of Sleep : — 

" Ere on my bed my limbs I lay, 
It hath not been my use to pray 
With moving lips or bended knees ; 
But, silently, by slow degrees, 
My spirit I to love compose, 
In humble trust mine eyelids close, 
With reverential resignation ; 
2$o wish conceived, no thought expressed, 
Only a sense of supplication — 
A sense o'er all my soul impressed, 
That I am weak, yet not unblest, 
Since in me, round me, everywhere, 
Eternal strength and wisdom are." 



PRAYER. 



191 



ness which is at our command ; nay, with more than we 
can actually command 9 with all that we can obtain from 
God, who, if we ask Him, will ever help to prepare His 
own sacrifice, and who does in fact aid every prayer ere 
He accepts it. 

Secondly, the will straggling to obey in all things the 
law of God is the grand condition on which earnest 
prayer becomes (so far as we may judge) acceptable to 
our Maker. Prayers that God will make us better are 
utterly nugatory, unless we resolve while offering them 
to do all we can to become so. A single sin, however 
apparently trifling, however hidden in some obscure 
comer of our consciousness — a sin which we do not 
intend to renounce — is enough to render* real prayer 
impracticable. Often and often, doubtless, we have all 
found this — found that we went on perhaps for many 
long days, unable to send forth any aspiration with 
a chance of being heard on high. But if we turned 
inwards, and with severe scrutiny sought out the 
offending act or sentiment which caused our spiritual 
paralysis — if, having found it, we deliberately resolved, 
with the whole power of our wills, " This sin shall be 
done never more," how marvellously did that one effort 
thrust back the bolt which had barred to us the gate of 
heaven ; how instantly did we find that we could now 
" knock, and it should be immediately opened" to us! 
As I have said, the smallest sin is enough : the discord 
of a single string among all the thousand in our nature 
will destroy the harmony which prayer requires between 



192 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



our wills and that of Grod. Not till every chord is 
attuned to the fullest unison with that eternal right 
wherewith God's voice makes the universe resound, can 
we hear in our souls that awful and mysterious music. 
A course of action not wholly upright or honourable, 
feelings not entirely kind and loving, habits not spot- 
lessly chaste and temperate — any of these are impassable 
obstacles. We must thrust them aside, or give up 
prayer till (rod's loving severity forces us to renounce 
them. If we know of a kind act which we might, but 
do not intend, to perform — if we be aware that our 
moral health requires the abandonment of some pleasure 
which yet we do not intend to abandon, here is cause 
enough for the loss of all spiritual power. In a very 
striking manner the same truth holds good with respect 
to our irascible passions. It is actually impossible to 
" offer our gift at the altar" whilst " our brother hath 
aught against us." Even one resentful (though perhaps 
not at all revengeful) feeling will rise up and stand an 
angel of wrath across our path ; nor can we ever pass 
by till we have turned back in heart to perfect love and 
charity towards him who hath trespassed against us. 
I know this seems an exaggeration ; but if there be one 
truth of religious experience more clear than another, I 
believe it is this very one. I would appeal to my 
reader's own consciousness, whether it be not as I have 
said. The lesson is no mere corollary from broader 
doctrines concerning prayer, and credible only on that 
account. Many a human soul has felt it — clearly, un- 



PRAYER. 



193 



mistakably felt it. We are injured or insulted, and 
natural angry feelings arise. We try to pray as usual, 
and though we have borne our injury without attempt 
at, or intention of, retaliation, yet our words are all 
driven back on us ; we cannot pray. By-and-by, per- 
haps, we try a little to check and modify our sentiment 
of anger ; we say to ourselves that we will forgive the 
offender — act towards him as if nothing had happened. 
But this does not go to the root of the matter : we still 
feel a thorough aversion to our enemy ; we wish secretly 
that we might never see him again ; and as to grasping 
his hand, if that be necessary, why, we will do it, but we 
would infinitely rather be convinced it was not right or 
required of us. Again, in this mood we try to pray. 
It may not be. Unaccountable as it then may seem to 
us, whole weeks and months may go by, all our other 
duties be performed as usual, the affair itself fade in 
comparative obscurity among our passions, but still true 
prayer is denied us, even when we seek it anxiously. 
At last some good influence coming from God, perhaps 
through the softening effects of time, perhaps through 
some act of our enemy, perhaps through more imme- 
diate intuition of duty, opens our eyes to the nature of 
the feelings we have so long indulged, and true human 
love and kindness flow into our souls once more. If the 
offence has really been a great one, we pity the offender 
with God-like pity, and desire for his repentance and 
restoration. If it has been merely some half-meant and 
trifling trespass which we have magnified into such 

K 



194 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



mortal affront, we are too much, ashamed of our sense- 
less exaggeration of its importance to attach, any more 
blame to the trespasser. Now again we seek to pray, 
and we do pray — our first prayer perhaps a blessing on 
the head of him who has " despitefully used us." At 
last the fire has kindled, and God says to us once more, 
" Ye shall speak, and I will answer."* 

It would seem that this fact indicates the existence of 
a law of spirit explanatory of a large number of religious 
phenomena. The peculiar connexion between human 
charity and Divine communion points out necessarily 
the mild, forgiving hearts which overflow with pure 
natural affection and loving-kindness to be the recipients 
of the largest share of God's grace. Thus, vast intel- 
lectual power, giving a man apparently great capacity 
for all high gifts, and even noble moral strength, dis- 
playing itself in stern self-control and the scrupulous 
discharge of external social duties, all these frequently 
fail to bring to their possessor the spiritual privileges 
shared by humbler but more tender souls. It is not the 
marble-palace mind of the philosopher which God will 
visit so often as the lowly heart which lies sheltered 
from the storms of passion, and all trailed over by the 
fragrant blossoms of sweet human affections. f 

* "Our rabbins deliver to us: — they who receive scorn, but scorn 
no man — who bear reproaches, and return them not, who show love to 
men, of them the Scriptures saith, they shall love him, and be as the 
sun going forth in his might." — Schabbath, Tract of Mishna, fol. 883. 

+ Thus may be explained also several well-recognised phenomena in 
the relative religious and moral condition of the sexes. Women are 



PRAYER. 



195 



But it will perhaps be urged : — " This entire harmony 
of the will of man with that of Grod is the result of 
prayer — it is what prayer is intended to obtain, there- 
fore it cannot be the necessary preparation for it." It 
is very difficult to find language which shall discri- 
minate the mysterious inter- action of the parts of our 
nature which concern this problem. The true will of 
man is always irrevocably righteous, and by its nature 
self-legislative of the whole law. Sin is the inaction 
of this will, whereby it permits the blind instincts 
of the lower nature to lead us to feel or act contrary to 
the law.* 

commonly more religious than men, because they are more open to 
spiritual influences. Real virtue in a woman (not mere subservience to 
those social restrictions which cause much of the apparent inequality 
of male and female morality) is, I imagine, very rare without religion. 
Having reached some degree of virtue, there is little to prevent her 
becoming religious. Men, on the contrary, have often a great deal of 
virtue with very little religion ; their stronger irascible and sensual 
passions continually thwarting spiritual influences. 

* See Theory of Intuitive Morals, chap. iii. The Kantian doctrine of 
freedom therein expounded has always excited animosity, but the reason 
why it has done so would appear to be merely a mutual misapprehension. 
The most vehement opponents of Kant would, I presume, be willing 
generally to admit that there is at all times in us something which re- 
mains true to the right — something which is more than a knoivledge of it, 
something which wills that the right be done. This, as Butler proved, 
has the natural mpremacy over the other parts of our nature ; we 
therefore denominate it sometimes the higher nature. Further, this 
nature is united in our consciousness indissolubly with our own identity. 
We therefore say, with Paul, 4 ' With the mind I myself serve the law 
of God, but with the flesh the law of sin : yet not I, but sin which 

K 2 



196 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



Xo^r, of course, at the moment of prayer this will 
may be in one or other of the various states of activity 

dwelleth in me." This higher self we call, then, the true self of man. 
And as I have just said, it is properly a Will, that by which a man is 
a person, and not a thing. All this, I suppose, will be generally con 
ceded. And we also are perfectly ready to admit in full that the mani- 
fold desires of the intellect, affections, and senses present themselves 
in opposition to the higher self in the form of wishes and deteimina- 
tions, which, in common phraseology, we also call wills. The higher 
self is a righteous will, desiring right for right's own sake : the lower 
desires are blind wills, not seeking wrong for wrong's sake, but seeking 
their natural gratifications irrespective of moral restrictions. Now ? let 
the opponent of the Kantian terminology decide what course a writer 
on moral philosophy is to pursue when his subject requires Mm to 
speak of the righteous will. It is perfectly distinguished (as is admitted 
on all hands) from the blind wills, and these last cannot, with equal 
propriety, be called wills, because they are not equally identified with 
the self — the rational person. Why, then, may he not speak of it 
always as "the true will," and announce, whenever needful, that "the 
true will of man is by nature and irrevocably righteous V It is true 
that he has chosen a popular word, which, therefore, must always be 
liable to be misinterpreted according to the laxity of all our colloquial 
phraseology. But may he, on the other hand, coin a new word in its 
stead, or borrow a Greek one — say the " Vvxh ^oyov exov" of Aristotle 1 
A very kind critic of the first part of this Essay has remarked (Non* 
conformist, April 30th, 1S56) that "the author has restricted his auditory 
to the student class, by using the distinction of homo noumenon and 
homo phenomenon, which the ' general reader ' will by no means 
endure." It is a fact that people resent as an impertinence any attempt 
of the metaphysician to affix a special nomenclature to the parts of the 
mind, while they freely concede to the anatomist the right to do so to 
the parts of the body. It is hard that the indolence of readers should 
forbid the metaphysician to use scientific terms, and that he should 
then be taunted with the imperfections of the popular phrases he :s 
compelled to adopt. 



PRAYER. 



197 



or inaction. Viewing the series of duties laid out 
before us, it may be ready and resolved to coerce the 
lower nature into the observance of some of them, while 
with regard to others, the powerful desires of its anta- 
gonist are ready to outweigh the feeble resistance it 
is prepared to make. The pre-requisite of prayer I 
believe to be this — that the will should in all points of 
duty be in full activity. It need not necessarily have 
actually vanquished the opposing desire, but it must be 
in vigorous combat with it. In this already commenced 
and earnest contest, it calls to God to add to its natural 
strength by a fresh inflowing of Divine Spirit, and the 
prayer possesses all the conditions which ensure suc- 
cess. But if there be no contest, no attempt on the part 
of our will to assert its own strength, then it is utterly 
idle to ask for that of God. It would be against all the 
laws of His government of souls that He should give it 
to us. So true is all this, that if we are so happy at 
any time as to know no duty which we are not fully 
prepared to perform, prayer instinctively turns to the 
request for fresh light to see better our duties in the 
future, or more imperfections to repent in the present. 

This, then, even the perfect attuning of our wills to 
the Will of God, is "Devotion." It is the giving to 
God all our desires, regrets, aspirations, labours. It is 
the resolution to obey God's Law in the future ; the 
resignation to all God's past or present chastisements ; 
the absolute, full, and joyous concord of our whole 
souls with the entire scheme of His Providence for our- 



198 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



selves and for all men, in this life and through eternity. 
This is Prayer — Prayer at its culmination and zenith, 
the highest glory and the highest joy of a created soul. 

There now remain some other points to consider 
respecting prayer. It has been seen that to pray for 
physical good is at once unphilosophical and irreligious, 
and that our requests must be solely for spiritual gifts. 
Are those gifts to be asked for ourselves alone, or for 
others also ? 

The answer to this question is by no means obvious. 
The negative opposes a very high intuition ; the affirm- 
ative is nearly destitute of any philosophical explanation. 
That God will " give of His Spirit to him that asks it" 
thereby entirely respecting the freedom of the human 
will, which may or may not thus ask for added moral 
power — this is to be understood. The law of spirit, 
whereby the soul's own " drawing to God " is made the 
condition of " God's drawing to the soul " — this is com- 
prehensible enough. But that one man's holy will can 
bring strength from heaven for another, that A.'s 
prayer will draw God's spirit to B. — that is a very 
different thing. Whatever help God could, consist- 
ently with the preservation of B.'s freedom, give to him 
in consequence of A.'s prayer, would he not have given 
it to him without it ? Does not He do all that can be 
done for the virtue of every soul which He has made ? 

I confess I see no direct escape from this argument ; 
yet there are some considerations which may help us to 



PRAYER. 



199 



meet it. It is manifest, in the first place, that in the 
visible world Grod does allow us to conduce most im- 
portantly to each other's virtue. Our actions, words, 
and even looks, have not only a real, but vast, spiritual 
power over those in bodily company with us. There is 
nothing incredible, then, in the idea that God should 
make B.'s spiritual concerns influencible by A. Among 
God's instruments for B.'s welfare, A. is one already — 
say as a preacher or friend. Can he then benefit him 
also in the supersensible world through prayer ? If we 
suppose this to be done by inclining God's will to help 
him, the doctrine is obviously absurd. God wills his 
virtue already far more than A. can do. But is there 
no other way ? Is there no possibility that prayer may 
be a real agent in that spirit-world of which both the 
Infinite and the two finite souls are dwellers, and that 
in some way (necessarily, because of the realm of action, 
unknown to us) that earnest and ardent will of man 
throbbing in harmony with that of God for the virtue 
of his brother, may bring to that brother's spirit some 
Power from on high ? We do not know that it is so ; 
we cannot even imagine a rationale for the matter 
which suffices tolerably, as in the case of personal 
prayer ; but we do not know any decided reason why it 
should be otherwise. 

The argument, therefore, I conceive, stands thus : — 
1. Prayer for the spiritual good of others is not phi- 
losophically incredible. The laws of the supersensible 
world are not known to us like those of the world of 



200 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



plienomena ; nay, we have reason to believe that those 
laws must afford free action for those supersensible 
wills of which that world is the birthplace. In pray- 
ing, then, for any spiritual event, we are not praying 
against known laws (as in the case of physical good), 
but, as we think, in accordance with laws expressly 
admitting the action of our prayers. 

2. Neither are such prayers religiously objectionable. 
The boon for which we pray — namely, our brother's 
moral good — is, beyond all doubt, God's direct and 
primary will. In praying for it, we run no risk of 
opposing His will, as when we ask for physical boons 
which His justice or His goodness may make Him 
forbid. 

3. The philosophical objection to intercessory spi- 
ritual prayer being thus nugatory, and the religious 
argument lying altogether in its favour, there remains 
to consider what may be urged for it. I believe that 
this will be found to be as much as could possibly apply 
to the case. There is an intuition very common, very 
deep, and obviously belonging to the very purest class 
of our spiritual instincts. This intuition urges us not 
unfrequently to try the power of prayer to reclaim some 
erring beloved one, to bring some resentful heart to 
forgiveness of its wrongs, to awaken some sleeping soul 
to the sense of its sin. I believe that when the instinct 
to ask such things is strong, it brings with it a strange 
presage of the success which will attend the prayer. 
Ought we, then, to disregard such an impulse (an im- 



PRAYER. 



201 



pulse which we know to be at all events in harmony 
with God's Will, even if it should be actually powerless) 
because we cannot explain how it can act in the un- 
known world whither we send forth the strong prayer 
to its mysterious work ? Surely, we need not do our 
souls such hurt as would be caused by the unnatural 
compression of such pure feelings. We may, in all 
confidence of its innocence, in all piety towards God, 
yield to our heart's voice. And if — if, as I firmly 
believe, experience ratifies the wisdom as well as piety 
of the act ; if the good we have implored does 
come to the soul of our brother ; then, in all philo- 
sophical strictness, the validity of intercessory spiritual 
prayer must be held established. It has no known 
law against it. It has in its favour intuition and 
experience. 

And what if we should go yet one step further ? 
What if our prayers should follovj behind the veil of 
death the souls for whom we had asked God's blessing 
here — the souls bound to our own by ties of love so 
strong that they stretch from world to world, and hold 
us yet in the bond which has only grown more solemn 
and more holy ? Methinks good reason must be shown 
why we are not to follow an instinct so natural before 
we are forbidden to do so. 

The Protestant Churches usually exclude from their 
offices all Prayer for the Dead, on the ground that the 
condition of souls for all eternity is determined irre- 

k 3 



202 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



vocably from the moment of dissolution.* Prayer for a 
soul in their stationary heaven is superfluous ; and 

* An Anglican clergyman has favoured me with the following 

note : — 

' ' Very early, I believe, at least, in the second century, prayers were 
offered privately and openly for the dead. I do not think that for a 
long time this extended to any but those classed as saints, the prayer 
being for 'their perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and 
soul, in everlasting glory (God having provided some better thing for 
us, that they without us should not be made perfect.' — Heb. xi. 40). 
These prayers being mostly grounded on the idea that there was but 
little separation between the good alive and the good departed, and 
that the duty and privilege of mutual prayer for each other's welfare 
was still the part of Christians. The same feeling led also very early 
to the celebration of the Holy Communion at burials, whereby the 
friends of the departed testified their belief that the communion of the 
saints in Christ extended beyond the grave. All this was long before 
the doctrine of purgatory was broached In the mediaeval ser- 
vices of the Eoman Church, there were the commendation of the soul 
between the death and burial, also mass for the dead, &c. Modified 
forms of these were retained in Edward YI.'s first Prayer Book, 1549. 
Thus, in the Burial of the Dead, ' I commend thy soul to God, ' &c. 
' We commend into Thy hands the soul of this Thy servant, beseeching 
that when the judgment shall come/ &c, ' this our brother and we 
may be found acceptable. Grant unto this Thy servant, that the sins 
which he committed in this world be not imputed unto him ; and that 
when that dreadful day of the general resurrection shall come, make 
him to rise also with the just and righteous, and receive this body 
again to glory, then made pure and incorruptible,' &c. Also in the 
service for the Holy Communion at a burial : 'We beseech Thee .... 
that both we and this our brother, receiving again our bodies and 
ising again .... may obtain eternal joy.' All this, of course, when 
the doctrine of purgatory was repudiated. In the prayer 1 for the 
whole estate of Christ's Church,' of the same date, is this passage : ' We 
commend unto Thy mercy all other Thy servants which are departed 



PRAYER. 



203 



prayer for a soul doomed to sink for ever deeper and 
deeper down the gulfs of hell, without possibility of 
re-ascension 5 is necessarily absurd. The denial, there- 
fore, of the validity of prayer for the dead in the Pro- 
testant Churches is a corollary from their doctrines 
concerning a future state, and must stand or fall with 
those doctrines. 

The Romish Church admits of prayer for the dead, 
but renders it painful and degrading by making it 
expressly a mode of saving souls out of purgatory. The 
mourner has first to believe that his lost parent, wife, 
or child, is suffering torments, which torments it will he 
for his welfare to escape ; and then he may begin to 
supplicate the awful Judge who has condemned this 
loved soul to such pangs to reprieve it, and permit 

hence from us with the sign of faith, and now do rest in the sleep of 
peace. Grant nnto them Thy mercy, and everlasting peace,' &c. By 
the year 1552, the opinion against prayers for the dead had gained 
ground, and accordingly all reference to the departed was omitted at 
the end of the prayer 'for the whole estate of Christ's Church ;' and 
the expression 1 militant here upon earth ' was added to the title to 
restrict it still more, and everything that could be judged to be a 
prayer for the dead was excluded from the Burial Service. At the final 
revision of the Prayer Book, in 1662, the thanks for the departed was 
added to the prayer for the Church militant. This exclusion of the 
doctrine from her services is all, I think, that the Reformed Church 
has done to discourage it. Doubtless the Reformers preached against 
it ; but, unless in the Homilies, I know not where she can have con- 
demned it. And this, I believe, it is which has left it open for some at 
all times to pray in private for their departed friends — in fact, to fall 
back upon the primitive custom." 



204 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



His justice to be bought off with, prayers and pe- 
nances.* 

* The authority for such expiation is in the famous passage, 
2 Maccab. xii. 43. This is no bad instance of the difficulties attend- 
ant on the basing of morals on a traditional authority. ^Yhat un- 
learned or what ordinarily learned man can decide the controversy 
between the great Churches of Christendom, whether the Books of 
Maccabees are or are not apocryphal ? Yet on this fact turns the 
question of the personal duty of prayer for the dead. If Rome be right, 
and the books inspired, then the act is expressly declared by God to be 
"good and holy" (v. 45). If the Protestants be right, and the books 
apocryphal, then the practice is a 4 'fond thing vainly imagined" — 
useless and superstitious ! Of course, no sound criticism warrants the 
exegesis of the doctrine from the texts in the Xew Testament, 2 Tim. 
i. IS, and Matt. xii. 32 (the assertion in the latter, that there are some 
sins not pardoned in the world to come, involving, as the Romanists 
think, the admission that there are others which are so). 

The Jews offer many prayers on the day of solemn expiation for those 
souls which may be in their year of purgatory — or, as they call it, in 
" Abraham's bosom," or the Upper Gehenna. They believe that all 
Jews will be released from the Lower Gehenna through Abraham's 
intercession (fiemara Arabia, f. 19). Islam admits of two purgatories — 
Adhabalcabor, the "penalty of the sepulchre," where Monkir and 
Xekir torment the dead bodies ; and El Araf, where the souls remain 
during "Barzak," or the interval between death and the resurrection. 
The Parsees not only pray now for the dead, but believe that the 
righteous will all pray and weep over the sufferings of the wicked 
during the final three days of their purgatory, before passing through 
the rivers of molten metal which shall flow at the resurrection, and 
prepare all created souls, including Ahrimanes himself, for everlasting 
purity and joy in Gorotman (Zend-A vesta, Boundehesch, trans. Anquetil 
du Perron, b. ii. p. 413). Sabaeanism taught that the wicked would be 
pardoned after a purgation of 4000 years. That of the ancient Egyp- 
tians, for whose termination they embalmed their dead, was to last 
3000. Ages of wearisome labour were supposed to expiate the sins of 



PRAYER. 



205 



The faith which teaches us that all suffering is good 
as well as just, and that all souls are " in the Hand of 
God," for their everlasting weal— such a faith, in admit- 
ting of prayer for the dead, must manifestly do so for 
a different object than that of freeing them from purify- 
ing (and therefore mercif ul) sufferings ; nor can it 
involve the terrible evil of darkening the character 
of God to our hearts, while it brings comfort to the 
wound of our human affections. God is not to us the 
dreadful Judge tormenting with unbenefiting pangs the 
loved one we have lost. He is the Father to whose care 
we have committed him, the Mother who has carried 
him forth folded in Her infinite Breast. What if the 
new home to which that Parent has brought him have 
for him some lessons severer than he learned below ? 
what if that next stage of being must be a school- world 
harder than this to him who failed to profit by God's 
teaching here ? — in any case is there in the fate of our 
brother aught to grieve or terrify us ? Does it not, on 
the contrary, serve to draw us nearer to the Lord of 
Life and Death, that we can trust Him so surely with 
that treasure of our hearts ? And when we come to 
pray to Him for the lost one He has borne away from 
our sight, need there be any agonizing supplications 
that He will grant a respite, a remission of torture? 

•the wicked Peruvians. "He who has gone to the place of misery," 
say the Buddhist authorities, "after he has suffered enough for his 
miserable deeds or sins, it appears that he can become free." — Buddhist 
Tract appended to Mahawanse, p. 11. 



206 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



The thought is abhorrent. We commend to the Father 
of the Living and the Dead the dear spirit we have 
loved ; we ask that as He helped his progress here, so 
He will help it onward for ever in that glorious path of 
virtue, piety, and joy, which we too shall travel — 

" Aloft, aloft, still shall we climb and climb, 
From terrace to broad terrace evermore, " 

following on through all the worlds, nearer and for ever 
nearer to our blessed God. Thus may the departed be 
bound to us, indebted to us still. Death need not, and 
ought not, to sever the bond uniting those immortal 
souls which never cease to exist, or think, or love, and, 
inhabiting always some mansion of the same Father, 
meet continually, albeit hidden from each other, in the 
same acts of prayer and adoration. The desolation 
which comes to us at the thought that we can never do 
anything more for our loved mother, brother, friend, is 
brightened at once by the belief that whatever our 
prayers could do in life, they can surely do still ; and 
that, safe and blest as our dear ones are in God's good 
keeping, it is not forbidden to us to contribute towards 
their highest welfare in that very act of prayer wherein 
our severed spirits yet may meet, and wherein our own 
wounded hearts find their purest consolation.* 

* Perhaps the reason why the natural instinct in favour of prayer 
for those we love has not oftener borne down the hard, dogmatic teach- 
ing which would forbid us to pray for the dead, may be found in the 
fact that, as it is usually the knowledge of some special want which 



PRAYER, 



207 



I have now slightly indicated the abstract grounds 
for the direct Duty of Worship in its threefold forms — 
Thanksgiving, Adoration, and Prayer. These duties are 
all, as I have endeavoured to demonstrate, incumbent on 
every rational creature of God simply in that capacity, 
and quite independently of his position as a social being 
— a member of a family, a church, or a state. Have 
they, however, further claims on us in these respects ? 
Is there such a thing as a Duty of Public Worship as 
well as a Duty of Private Worship? The universal 
intuition of our race has long ago solved this question. 
Man's social character is so preponderating a part of his 
nature, that it claims of right to take a place in all his 
actions and sentiments. Children of one Father, sub- 
jects of one Lord, it would be a monstrous thing should 
we meet in every sensual, intellectual, and aesthetic pur- 
suit and gratification, refuse to meet in our approaches 
to that same Father and Lord. The sons and daughters 
who should never desire to join around a loving parent, 
but ask always for separate interviews with him, and 
while living in full and friendly intercourse with each 
other on all other matters, reserve that whole share of 
their affections, duties, and anxieties from each other's 
eyes — such sons and daughters would act in a manner 
unnatural and deserving of all reprobation. I think 
this is the true view of the duty of Social Worship — 

incites prayer, our ignorance of the whole condition of the departed 
leaves us without this special stimulus. We can only vaguely commend 
the spirit to God. 



208 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS, 



that it is a natural things to which, we are led by most 
pure and holy instincts, for the violation of which we 
find no excuse* Nay, on the contrary, the beneficial 
results of public worship have been found so great, that 
the duty has been frequently induced from those results 
alone, and placed altogether on the footing of one (and 
the chief one) of the means of grace, 

The design of this little treatise excluding the con- 
sideration of that branch of ethics which concerns men 
as members of States (politics), it will not be necessary 
to touch on the very difficult questions connected with 
the public performance of worship ; questions, however, 
whose difficulty results chiefly from assumptions totally 
at variance with a theology simply deduced from the 
axioms of reason. Were the idea exploded that the 
belief in a certain series of logical propositions is the 
sole condition of Divine acceptance, then the union of 
human beings in prayer and thanksgiving to their 
common Father would no longer be trammelled by the 
fetters of opposing sects, and the hearts which now 
throb with the same hallowed aspirations, or swell with 
the same sense of gratitude, would no longer be com- 
pelled to turn away sorrowfully or scornfully from each 
other's temples. As things stand now, each man must 
join himself to the society of worshippers whose intel- 
lectual creed most nearly approaches his own, because, 
even if he disclaim the popular error respecting the all- 
importance of such creeds, he can hardly do it save by 
gaining a faith so radically different, that the very 



PRAYER, 



209 



topics of his prayers and his thanksgivings will lie 
entirely in another channel. Now, although a similar 
creed has a tendency to produce similar spiritual con- 
ditions, yet it by no means follows that it can do so 
with such equality as always to give to fellow- believers 
fellow-feeling on the deeper matters of religion wherein 
the stage of moral progress is far more effective than 
that of mental advance. It were greatly to be desired 
that congregations should be able to gather themselves 
in accordance with their spiritual sympathies, and thus 
really meet in the spontaneous emotions and aspirations 
of worship. Our churches are now like schools in 
which the classes are arranged according to the colour 
of the scholars' clothes, instead of according to their 
acquirements and capacities ; and the larger the sect, 
the more it must lower the tone of its cultus to meet 
the abilities of that majority who cannot, with any 
veracity, express the more fervent and exalted religious 
emotions. Thus, to whatever sect a pious man belong, 
the chances will always be against his finding his 
co-sectarians actually his co-religionists, and his sym- 
pathies of feeling will always be leading him away from 
his sympathies of thought — the ascetic Anglican into 
the Papal fold, the fervent Evangelical into the earnest 
sects of the Baptists or Methodists. When these " con- 
versions" take place, are they the result of intellectual 
processes of conviction ? Probably not once in a thou- 
sand times. 

These observations may serve to explain the apparent 



210 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



anomaly that, though social worship is the natural 
instinct of a religious soul, yet many religious souls 
do not seek it. They would seek it, could they hope to 
find sympathy of feeling in their fellow-worshippers 
combined with such uniformity of views as would permit 
of their junction. But the combination of these two 
desiderata is almost unattainable, and a few experiments 
have proved that, instead of following their spiritual in- 
stincts in such social worship, they must do violence to 
them at every moment. Nothing is more senseless and 
superstitious than the blame attached to persons under 
such circumstances for not attending public divine service. 

It now remains to be asked whether ethics have any 
claim to decide the place or time when worship, public 
or private, ought to be offered. The slightest con- 
sideration of the principles on which moral science is 
grounded must suffice to answer this question in the 
negative. Intuitive morals deduce, a priori, that 
Worship is Right, just as they deduce that to promote 
our fellow- creatures' welfare is right. But experience 
alone can teach when worship may best be paid, just as 
it alone can teach how we can best produce our neigh- 
bour's happiness. (See Theory, p. 116.) When we 
have found by experience at what intervals, at what 
hours, and places, and postures, we are each of us best 
able to perform this solemn duty, then the obedience to 
all those circumstances becomes to us the right way to 
fulfil the duty, just as, when we have ascertained by 



PRAYER. 



211 



what means at our disposal we can best help our 
brother, the adoption of them becomes to us the right 
way to fulfil that duty we owe to him. No one 
imagines that if he know his neighbour to want food, 
he fulfils the duty of benevolence by giving him 
clothes ; neither, if he know that he cannot effectually 
concentrate his thoughts on religious matters at certain 
hours for certain periods of time, in certain places and 
in certain attitudes, can he at all fulfil the duty of 
worship by going through forms of devotion under 
those nullifying conditions. This principle, I suppose, 
will be theoretically acknowledged by most persons who 
do not insist on the right of a tradition or a Church 
to ordain the manner and time of our approaches to 
God.* It is to be desired, however, that it should be 
more brought into practice. 

There is a beautiful meaning in the old myth of 
Bethel. That spot wherein a man's soul has ascended 
the angel's ladder of Prayer, is sacred to him evermore, 

* The extent to which this intolerable thraldom is attempted to be 
pushed is sometimes astounding to a Freethinker. J. H. Newman 
somewhere recommends to all Anglicans, ' 'In your private devotions 
use the prayers of the Church : " as much as if he were to advise, 
'When you write to your mother, copy the Complete, Letter '-writer /' 
There is a story in Hue's China of an affectionate son who, after years 
of absence, having an opportunity for sending a letter to his mother, 
simply desired one of his pupils to copy out for him the epistle esta- 
blished by custom as proper on such occasions ! " What love could he 
have retained for her ?" say we ; ' ' or what idea could he have gained 
of the use of a letter ?" 



212 RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 

be it beneath, the starry sky, or beside the peaceful bed 
where God " giveth His beloved sleep," by the bank of 
the quiet river, or under the glittering shadows of the 
woods, in the gloom of the solemn cathedral nave at 
eventide, or in the floods of the glad sunlight which, 
bathed through some long summer Sabbath a rich, 
garden's stillness— in that spot, wheresoever it be, an 
altar is builded by the busy hand of his memory ; and 
again and again, in life's journey ings, he may offer up 
there the sacrifices of a grateful or a contrite spirit, 
God will make it blessed to him thus to keep cherished 
in remembrance the holy joys His love has once 
vouchsafed.* 

Nor has Time less power than Place to bring good 
influences to our souls. It is one of the most beautiful 
instances of the identity of human nature's religious 
sentiment acting under every varied circumstance of 
age, and clime, and creed, that men have continually 
consecrated the same hours of the day to the worship of 
God. From the spontaneous sense of their appropriate- 
ness, the Morning and Evening Prayer have found their 
place in every ritual and in every heart, f Nothing can 

* This seems to have been early felt by the Bramin pietists : — " Let 
the person who desires to worship the Deity in his mind choose a spot 
by the banks of a river, or in a field, or near a grove, or in a cave, or 
near a waterfall — at any rate in a secret spot, where he can remain 
undisturbed. " — Vrihudarwnyuku Upanishad. 

+ The Jews have a tradition that Abraham ordained the morning 
prayer, Isaac that of midday, and Jacob that of the evening. Maimo- 
nides says that Esdras first regularly appointed prayer at the hours of 



PRAY EE. 



213 



be more natural than that the children of the Father in 
Heaven should thus offer to Him the greeting of their 
first waking thoughts, and ask of Him His blessing ere 
they rest in His wide arms of love. Nothing can be 
more fit than that the workers in Grod's great vineyard 
should thus commence each division of life's task with a 
prayer for help and guidance, and close it by a review 
of their imperfect labour, by contrition and thanks- 
giving. 

These things follow so simply from the relations we 
bear to our Creator and Lord, that I think morality 
may fairly ask us to show, if we forsake them, some 
cause why such natural and holy habits should not 
approve themselves to us. And further, the morning 
and evening prayers are not only natural to us, but 
manifestly exceedingly useful in aiding our virtue and 
piety. A large amount of sin and error in the world 
results from the unprepared way in which we continu- 
ally rush into duties and temptations, without any pre- 
vious attempt to look those duties and temptations in 
the face, or form the deliberate resolution of meeting 
them aright. Roads of life which we shall walk in all 
our days, professions, marriages, pursuits of all sorts 
are undertaken in the most headlong manner as regards 
their moral aspects, even when worldly prudence has 

the morning and evening sacrifices. He is supposed to have composed 
the eighteen beautiful prayers in the Mischna, to which was afterwards 
added a nineteenth (full of curses on heretics), probably the work of 
Gamaliel. 



214 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



balanced with accuracy all their pecuniary and social 
advantages. Much less are regarded the smaller details 
of daily life, the business or the pleasure which the 
morning sees lying before us in the coming hours, and 
on whose good or evil performance or enjoyment the 
evening must look back to rejoice or to repent. If we 
desire heartily 

" To Feel, to Think, to Do, 
Only the holy Right — 
To yield no step in the awful race, 
No blow in the fearful fight " — 

must we not look all these things, as I have said, 
straight in the face? Must we not arm ourselves 
beforehand for the combat whensoever it threatens, and 
bind our iron mail of resolution most closely where we 
know it oftenest fails, and grasp with the strong up- 
lifted hand of prayer that " Ithuriel spear " which God 
will give to each loyal and valiant Will in His great 
host of souls ? 

And this must be done definitely, distinctly — not 
idly dreaming, as some seem to do, that there are 
duties too small to talk about to God, as well as 
blessings too small to thank Him for. He requires the 
duty and gives the blessing ; and that is enough to 
raise both of them into place in man's poor worship. 
Vagueness in prayer, as in all other religious matters, 
is feeble and null. Such resolves and petitions as this 
— " 0 Lord, be pleased to help me to perform my 
duties of the day," has not half the power of this : " I 



PRAYER. 



215 



ought to do to-day the particular impending duties a, 
b, c, and d, and to resist the particular impending 
temptations e, f 9 g, and h. I will do what I ought. 
Father of Spirits ! aid me to use the powers Thou hast 
given ; and if I fail, make me ere night repent."* 
Prayers of this sort track the whole line for our plough 
to work, and it will be strange if the furrow of the day 
be not straighter than one which began with only a 
vague glance at the distant guide-post. 

If the " Grolden Yerses " were really the work of 
Pythagoras, we might trace back to the dawn of Greek 
philosophy the discovery of the gain to the economy 
of human virtue to be obtained by the practice of 

* The Parsee morning prayers were full of the spirit of virtuous 
resolution. See Zend-Avesta, vol. ii. p. 9. At daybreak — " Augmentez 
la purete de mon coeur 6 Roi !" (Ormusd) : "Que je fasse des actions 
saintes et tres-pures " — Je prie avec purete de pensee, avec purete de 
parole, avec purete d'action; 6 Dieu, Juge excellent, grand, je me 
repens de mes peches. Je erois sans hesiter k Dieu et a sa loi. Mon 
ame sera celeste, l'enfer sera comble a la resurrection." (While fasten- 
ing the girdle) — "Dieu est Un ; la loi de Zoroastre est vraie ; Zoroastre 
est le vrai prophete ; Je suis resolu de faire le bien." (Three times 
aloud) — " Venez a mon secours, 6 Ormusd !" (Jescht Sade.) 

The Hindoo Code also ordains that a man should ' ' waken in the last 
watch of the night, and reflect on virtue and that, having risen and 
purified himself, he repeat in the morning twilight the beautiful Gay- 
atri — "I adore the majesty of that Divine Sun, the Godhead, who 
illuminates all, who gives all delights, from whom all proceed, to 
whom all must return, whom we invoke to direct our understand- 
ings aright in our progress towards His holy seat." — Inst. Menu, iv. 
92, 93. 



216 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



nightly self-scrutiny.* In any case, men did not wait 
long to find that he who seeks to " know himself " must 
study day by day the details of his moral health ; and 
that he who desires to lay up " treasures in heaven," 
must allow no waste of his soul's wealth to pass un- 
heeded, f And for Religious as well as Moral use, 
nightly prayer has its peculiar power. Sleep has in it 
so much of the helpless, trustful dependance of child- 
hood — it bears so strong a resemblance to its solemn 
antitype, God's messenger, Death — that the mind 
which feels not somewhat of tenderness and somewhat 
of sanctity in slumber must be insensible indeed. When 
we lie down to our rest, we disrobe ourselyes of all the 
proud prerogatiyes of our rationality, our thought and 
feeling, and free action in the world of sense ; we giye 
them all back into God's keeping, trusting that He will 
guard us and sustain our animal life while we lie power- 
less ; that He will make our own hearts beat for us 
while we are incapable of motion — will think of us 
while we cannot think of Him : and that when His 
morning sun rises on the just and unjust, He will giye 
back to us the splendid regalia of our humanity, our 
crown of reason, our sceptre of freedom, and send us 

* "Suffer not gentle sleep to close thine eyes 

Ere thou hast thrice reviewed the labours of the day. 
What hast thou learned ? what done ? what duty neglected ? 
For the evil thou hast done, repent; for the good, rejoice.'' 

Golden Verses. 

f " When a man goeth to bed, he ought first to take unto himself the 
kingdom of heaven. " — Sohar. Genes.. foL 103. 



PRAYER. 



forth once more " heirs of the earth and skies," We 
all do this practically every night. Is it not senseless 
to have no consciousness of an act so affecting ? Surely 
we might make the gentle boon of sleep altogether a 
holy thing, a blessing to be received always as if a 
mother's soft hand were closing our eyes, and our last 
dreamy thoughts nestled in the infinite pity of her 
heart. It was a beautiful thought of that old Moslem 
who told us to prepare for sleep as for prayer, and to 
yield to forgetfulness with the supplication, " 0, my 
God, unto Thee do I commit my soul, unto Thee do 
I look up with longing and fear [reverence]. With 
Thyself only can I find refuge from Thee/'* 

There is another hour beside that of morning and night 
which has commended itself to the feelings of humanity, 
less from obvious fitness than the other two, but more 
from the immediate hallowing influence of Nature. That 
the sunset hour should be consecrated alike through the 
wide plains of Islam and the realms of Roman Chris- 
tendom ;f that the East should answer by one great 

* Solicdn, by Ibn Zaffer, c. 1. 

t The evening twilight prayer, called Reih Ras, is appointed in the 
Twikha Nameh for all Sikhs, and the second repetition of the Gayatri 
to the Hindoos, in the Inst. Menu, iv. 93. Hue makes this curious 
remark : "There exists at Lha-Ssa a very touching custom, and which 
we felt a sort of jealousy at finding among infidels. In the evening, 
and just as the day is verging on its decline, all the TMbetiaus stay 
business, and meet together, men, women, and children, according to 
their sex and age, in the principal parts of the town, and in the public 
squares. As soon as the groups are formed every one kneels down, and 

L 



218 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



prayer the muezzin's proclamation of God's inviolable 
Unity, and that the West should bow in reverence as 
the vesper-bell peals for the adoration of the Man-God's 
mother* — is there not something wonderful in this 
chain of worship, which, link after link, rolls out over 
all the lands after the setting sun till the round world 
is girded by its zone of prayer ? There must be a true 
inspiration to guide such sympathy in creeds so various. 
The Lord of nature and of the human heart must Him- 
self have harmonized the evening's sacred summons to 
our ears, to make us all thus understand it aright. 
And verily He hath done so, and blessed that Sabbath- 
hour of the day, and hallowed it ! The red sun's slow 
decline makes the earth one grand and gorgeous cathe- 
dral, gleaming from west to east with the purple and 
golden lights of heaven's vast blazoned oriel. Each 
vale and lake becomes a censer, sending up its clouds of 
dew laden with the perfume of the closing flowers. The 
sweet choir of the birds sing out of their clear hearts 

they begin slowly, and in under-tones, to chant prayers. The religions 
concerts produced by these numerous assemblages create throughout 
the town an immense solemn harmony which operates forcibly on the 
soul. The first time we witnessed this spectacle we could not help 
drawing a comparison between this pagan town, where we all prayed 
together, and the cities of Europe, where people would blush to make 
the sign of the cross in public." — Hue's Tartary, p. 194. 

* "Vespers is the only popular service [in the Romish Church at 
present] ; and that, in connection with benediction, seems to be put 
forward by English Ul tramontanes as the congregational service of the 
Roman Church of the future." — Christian Remembrancer, Xo. 70. 



PRAYER. 



219 



their pure, childlike hymns ere they flutter to their rest, 
and leave a pause, calm and soft and solemn, through all 
the evening air. The hush of the night-wind passes 
away over the sleeping woods like a solitary chord 
swept slowly upon a far-off organ. Then the world is 
still. One by one, the lamps of the holy stars are 
lighted high up through all the shadowy arches of 
the sky. Nature's majestic fane waits but for the 
kneeling worshipper before the altar of the Lord of 
All. 

Xor is there aught less sacred in the dim closing of 
the autumnal eve, when the gloom sinks down lower 
and lower overhead, and every sound is still, and round 
us lies only the dull scene of withered ground, and 
turbid pool, and trees half shrouded in their moulder- 
ing" sere leaves and looming vaguely in the gathering 
shade. Xo longer now we stand in the glittering cathe- 
dral of the Christian world, but in nature's Karnak or 
Stonehenge, weird and sublime in its dim grandeur as 
those old Druid temples where, in the twilight of the 
ages, knelt the fathers of our race. Surely their great 
faith is even now in its noblest part our own. Surely 
in scenes like these it springs again within their chil- 
dren's souls ; that high and holy faith that beyond all 
earth's decay and desolation reigns a Living Lord, and 
that when our winter-life here hath passed away there 
shall arise for us an everlasting summer-time of holi- 
ness and joy, in the love of that Mightiest One in whom 
now and for ever we have our being, and to whose 

l 2 



220 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



world-wide Arm we cling even as the mistletoe clasps 
its parent oak.* 

It is surely an unwise and evil thing to slight these 
worship-calls of nature, to check and crush our own 
purest instincts. To many of us, unhappily, the follow- 
ing of them is nearly always impossible, to others often 
difficult. But when it is actually compatible with the 
other duties and necessary business of life, why should 
we not as eagerly avail ourselves of the aid to devotion 
which nature offers as we should do of the inspiring 
words of some great saintly human soul ? The Hindoo 
deems he sins if he turns from his five sacraments, the 
Romanist from his seven, the Protestant from his two. 
Christian, [Moslem, Gfuebre, Brahminist, think they 
offend if, while the sacred words of Bible, Koran, Zend- 
Avesta, or Yeda are read, they withdraw from the 
sound. But Grod's own wondrous sacrament, wherein 
we may all feed our souls on the mysteries of His 

* Hesus, "the Greatest and Best," the Supreme God of the Druids, 
was honoured by them under the emblem of an oak. The mistletoe 
was used to typify the relation held to Him by man, who is derived 
from God and exists in Him, yet is of a nature altogether inferior. The 
Druids taught that human life is a progress from " Abred," the state of 
evil, to " Gwynvyd,'"' the state of knowledge and felicity. Caesar men- 
tions the extreme fervour of their faith in immortality. It is worthy 
of remark, as proving the originality of that faith as a natural growth 
in the human soul, that the three most powerful religious systems of 
the ancient world, and which seem to have been most purely indigenous 
to their respective countries — namely, Brahminism, the Egyptian wor- 
ship, and Druidism — were precisely the creeds which set forth most 
distinctly and emphatically the doctrine of a future state. 



PRAYER. 



221 



glorious works, and commune in holiest feast of love 
with. His Spirit — God's own Scripture, the writing, 
ay, the autograph itself, of His Almighty Hand traced 
all over this World-Bible — who heeds how he neglects 
these ? who fears to excommunicate his soul by turning 
away from such God- ordained means of Grace ?* 

The rule of our conduct in these matters must, I 
think, be this : whensoever and wheresoever the desire 
to pray to God, or return Him thanks, or offer adora- 
tion to Him, comes spontaneously to our hearts, let 
us, if possible, obey the impulse there and then, and 
let us place ourselves again and again under the same 
hallowing influences. Let us in no case slight, or thrust 
aside, any such feelings, from habits of routine. The 

* "For if God had given instruction by means of books, lie who 
knew letters would have learned what was written, but the illiterate man 
would have gone away without receiving any benefit ; and the wealthy 
man would have purchased the Bible, but the poor man could not have 
been able to obtain it. Again, he who knew the language that was 
expressed by the letters might have known what was therein contained ; 
but the Scythian, and the barbarian, and the Indian, and the Egyptian, 
and all those who were excluded from that language, would have gone 
away without receiving any instruction. This, however, cannot be 
said with respect to the heavens; but the Scythian, and the barbarian, 
and the Indian, and the Egyptian, and every man that walks upon the 
earth, shall hear this voice. And of the things that are seen there is 
one uniform perception, and there is no difference, as is the case with 
respect to languages. Upon this volume the unlearned as well as the 
wise man shall be alike able to look, the poor man as well as the rich ; 
and into whatsoever land any one may chance to come, there, looking 
upwards towards the heavens, he will receive a sufficient lesson from 
the view of them." — St. Chrysostom, Homil. ix. 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATION'S. 



principle of keeping religion in its own time and place 
(as if all time and all place were not its rightful domain !) 
is, I suppose, rarely admitted by any one who is re- 
ligious at all ; but still the practice of setting apart 
regular hours and churches for private and public 
worship has a tendency, which ought to be guarded 
against, to limit the performance of such acts to those 
appointed moments and places. It is hard for any 
human being to understand the feelings of others on 
these topics, and presumptuous to counsel where we 
cannot understand. Yet this I would fain be allowed 
to say : — Temples built with hands are doubtless very 
dear and sacred to those who can find in them con- 
tinually the blessed sympathies of social worship. The 
solitary chamber, where we can "pray to our Father 
which seeth in secret," is to many a heart dearer and 
more sacred still. But a great loss is sustained when 
the church and the chamber monopolize all our better 
hours, and " Nature's domes of worship, earth and air," 
never behold us looking upward through the blue 
expanse of day, or the starry heights of night, towards 
Him— 

' ' Whose temple is all space ; 
Whose altar, earth, sea, skies." 

It is easy for all of us, except the dwellers in cities, to 
do this sometimes alone, and receive the numberless 
gentle influences by which God draws our hearts to 
Himself through His beautiful creation. Would to 
Heaven that it were also possible for us to do it some- 



PRAYER. 



223 



times with our brothers ! Is it a dream that the time 
is not very far away when men will feel that the sec- 
tarian differences which must long divide their ordinary- 
worship need not and ought not to do so always? 
What if some few simple words of thanks and adora- 
tion, some short prayer for Grod's Spirit of Love, could 
be agreed on by the severed folds of Christendom, and 
that once, say only once, in a year, in the soft summer- 
time, we could all meet in that fane of the free air 
which no sect can wall in for itself, and, in each parish 
through our lands, make some quiet spot the Temple of 
all — all, from the Romanist even to the Theist ? Would 
not that little glade or rocky nook be dearer for the 
rest of the year than proudest church or narrowest 
chapel ? 

There remains yet a subject which, though neces- 
sarily beyond the limits of a deductive science of 
morals, yet must appeal for ages (I hope for ever) to 
the conscience of civilized mankind. The institution of 
the Sabbath cannot, of course, be considered here in 
any other light than that of one commending itself to 
us as the intuition of some unknown great souls of old, 
sustained and ratified by something more than the 
popular credence in its supernatural authority — by a 
very general sense of its fitness, and by some experience 
of its moral and religious utility. I am not inclined to 
overrate the force of any of these arguments in favour 
of the observance of the Sabbath. Those same great 



224 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



minds which introduced it to the world instituted a 
variety of other rites, sacrificial and purificatory, other 
holidays, lunar and solar, which have died the natural 
death which awaits the forms of each old cultus when 
the new shoot of faith has grown out of it and put 
forth its own leaves after its kind. There is no a priori 
reason why we should keep the day on which we now 
know the Creator of this age-evolved cosmos did not 
rest, any more than the Isthmian festival which 
recorded the apotheosis of Ino and Melicerta as 
Leucothoe and Pakemon. How narrowly the Sab- 
bath escaped the usual fate of the rites of an outgrown 
creed, may be seen in the disregard of it shown imme- 
diately after the promulgation of Christianity.* But 

* It has been so fully and so often demonstrated of late, that the 
Jewish Sabbath can never be saddled on the first day of the Christian 
week, and that the Sabbatical institution is untenable as a Christian 
ordinance, biblical, apostolic, primitive, or reformed, that it would be 
superfluous to discuss here the folly of those sects which persist in 
endeavouring to uphold it on traditional grounds which have been 
utterly taken from their feet, instead of on grounds of feeling, and 
utility, which it is probable will grow stronger every year with the 
religious progress of the race. It will be sufficient for me to cite here 
two passages from the works of the two greatest Fathers of the Church, 
which will amply corroborate my assertion in the text, that the Sab- 
bath was on the point of dying out as an authoritative institution, 
when it revived as one adapted to the genuine sentiments and wants of 
human nature : — 

" For what purpose, then, I ask, did He add a reason respecting the 
Sabbath, and did no such thing as regards murder ? Because this 
commandment was not one of the leading (rwv 7rpo7]yGv/j.eywy) ones. 
It was not one of those which are accurately defined of our conscience, 



PRAYER. 



*225 



that it has risen again ; that the institution of a pre- 
historic age should have asserted its vitality through 
nearly four millenniums, and should at this very hour be 

but a kind of partial and temporary one, and for this reason it was 
abolished afterwards {tca.T€\vdri /uera ravra). But those which are neces- 
sary and uphold our life are the following : — Thou shalt not kill ; thou 
shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not steal," &c. — St. Chrysostom. 
Homil. xii. 

" Of all the ten commandments, only that of the Sabbath is enjoined 
to be observed figuratively, which figure we have received to be under- 
stood not to be still celebrated by the rest of the body." — St. Augustine, 
Ep. lv. c. xxii. 

Would it not appear as if the circumstance that the nine other com- 
mandments tally with the necessary moral law, had occasioned this 
one arbitrary command, which chanced to be mixed up with them, to 
assume an importance in no wise properly belonging to it ? Yet it would 
be hard to prove that the Decalogue in the twentieth of Exodus was 
meant by the compiler of the Mosaic books to be a universal moral 
code for the whole human race. It starts expressly with the exordium, 
" I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of 
Egypt." How can it be proved that the "thou" to whom the follow- 
ing precepts are addressed means any one not of the race "brought out 
of the land of Egypt ?" Y\ ith the special code of a nation the Eternal 
Law must of course be involved, but the universal code of humanity 
could not have for preamble the address to one nation only. Moreover, 
in Exod. xxxi. 16, 17, it is said, "Wherefore the children of Israel 
shall keep the Sabbath ... It is a sign beticeen me and the children 
of Israel for ever." And in Ezek. xx. 12, "Also I gave them my 
Sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them." Paley proves clearly 
enough that, though referred back to the Christian Creation, the Sab- 
bath was first instituted in the wilderness, and the institution addressed 
especially to the Israelites, Christ recapitulating only the Eternal Law, 
The whole story of the tables of stone is very extraordinary. Meursius 
(quoted by Sir G-. Wilkinson) says that in Egypt "the holy mysteries 

L 3 " 



'^26 RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 

in stronger life over the whole civilized world than ever 
it was in ages of formalism and superstition — this is 
surely some evidence that there is a true fitness to 
humanity in that " Sabbath which was made for man 
a true inspiration in the heart of its founder. 

Undoubtedly there is something beautiful in the idea 
of the whole human race thus pausing on one oft- 
recurring day from the pursuits of secular existence, 
and voluntarily and unanimously recalling that higher 
destiny which belongs to them as moral and religious 
beings ; living out that one day in their nobler rank. 
The animal life, which is the necessary basis of the 
moral ; the labours which support that animal life, and 
at the same time conduce towards the progress of the 
moral — these, for one day in seven, may fall into the 
background, and the real end and meaning of our 

were read to trie initiated out of a book called U^rpw/jLa, because it con- 
sisted of two stones fitly cemented together." It does not appear 
whether these were ever carried in their well-known arks, containing 
the two figures of cherubim — like Thmei (Truth.) and Re (Justice), and 
which Macrobius says {Saturn, i.) "were carried forward according to 
Divine inspiration whithersoever the Deity urged them." The Deca- 
logue of the Buddhists is as follows : — 1. Do not kill. 2. Do not steal. 
3. Do not commit adultery. 4. Do not lie. 5. Do not slander. 
6. Do not call ill names. 7. Do not speak words which are to no 
purpose but harm. 8. Do not covet the property of others, 9. Do 
not envy. 10. Do not err in the true faith, or think it false." Budd- 
hism enjoins a Sabbath at each of the lunar quarters. Dio Cassius 
says, ' ' The circumstance of the seven days being set apart to the seven 
planets, so called, took its origin from the Egyptians, but is found also 
over all mankind, having begun, so to speak, not long ago. " 



PRAYER. 



227 



existence come forward from the shade, in which they 
lie too often, in our consciousness. On the Sunday we 
cease to be ploughmen, sempstresses, shoemakers, and 
bricklayers : we become Men and Women. It is 
common for us to smile at the transformation of the 
poor artisan, attired in the suit he so simply designates 
as his " Sunday best." We jest, too, at the importance 
assumed by the clergyman on this his day of dignity 
and office. But, in truth, these little tokens are the 
natural outshowings of Sunday's real work. It is quite 
right and consistent that, on the day when we cease to 
be labourers and tradesmen to become men and women, 
we should cast aside the dress of each special order, and 
assume that which belongs to all classes alike. It 
is very fit that, on the day when mankind re- 
mits all secular pursuits, the lawyer, doctor, farmer, 
soldier, sailor, and merchant, brothers of our great 
human family, should be outshone by the one who has 
devoted himself to the ministry of religion. Sunday is 
the cleanly day among the soiled working ones, the 
priest-day among the six laymen-days of the week. 

It was a part of the utilitarian philosophy of the age 
of Addison that he should approve of the Sunday be- 
cause it encouraged cleanliness and decency. It may 
be a part of our more spiritual views to recognise in 
these outward tokens the appropriate emblems of the 
Sabbath's true meaning. 

Whatever may be said, however, in favour of the 
Sabbath as a natural institution for man, capable of 



HELTGIOI'S OBLIGATIONS. 



conducing importantly to his highest religious and 
moral interests, and having, consequently, a strong 
claim on the observance of every one who feels that 
natural fitness and believes in that highest usefulness, 
it must be admitted, on the other hand, that the en- 
forcing of obedience to a law so arbitrary is a wrong 
which no master or state can be justified in attempting; 
and that the fanatical extent to which the Sabbatical 
restrictions have been carried has rendered the whole 
institution liable to the question whether it at present 
produces more harm than good, more immorality than 
virtue, more disgust at religion than increase of piety.* 
But this need not, this will not, always be so ! The 
Sunday must become at last the day on which man best 
serves God by best aiding His grand design in creation. 
True Men and Women, and no longer Peasants, Citi- 

* I have heard pious Christian magistrates frequently state that a 
far larger number of crimes are committed on Sundays than on any 
other day in the week — nay, sometimes, than in the rest of the week 
together. If this be so (as I believe statistics corroborate) regarding 
legal crimes, what must it be regarding other forms of vice, profligacy, 
and private drunkenness '? This latter practice (so notoriously prevalent 
during the strict Scotch Sabbaths) seems to have commenced its con- 
nection with the day even in classic times. Plutarch tries to derive 
the word from u Sabboi," a name given to bacchanals, and observes 
that the Jews on that day "mostly exhort one another to drink and 
be drunken" (Syrap. iv. 6). What thousands of unhappy women of the 
lower ranks, servants and workwomen, trace their degradation to some 
Sunday lapse ! And lesser vices than these — ill-temper, quarrelling, 
moroseness — is there any day in the week in which they appear so per- 
tinaciously as during the weary hours of a Puritanical Sabbath ? 



PRAYER. 



229 



zens, Gentlefolk ; we shall develop in our happy Sab- 
baths all that in us belongs to our noble rank. Even 
our sensual natures may then seek their innocent enjoy- 
ments in flowers and music, as well as in the one sordid 
pleasure of the " Sunday dinner/ 9 which alone Fana- 
ticism now exempts from her embargo. Far more 
shall our intellectual natures revel in the free libraries, 
museums, scientific lectures, open to us on all sides. 
Our (esthetic tastes shall be cultured, and with them 
our minds refined and elevated, by picture-galleries and 
Crystal Palaces, and all the stately gardens and grand 
old woods, which their owners shall rejoice, on God's 
good day, to share with His less wealthy sons and 
daughters. Our affections shall hold their festival in 
family gatherings, and in a redoubling of all tender 
and gentle cares ; so that it shall come to pass that 
moroseness and spleen shall cease to disturb the day of 
rest, and an impatient word or unkind act seem doubly 
wrong when each household is keeping its sweet weekly 
agape. And lastly, and above all, shall our moral and 
religious natures grow and develop themselves, and fill 
us with joy unspeakable, upon that blessed day. We 
will have churches still ; ay, more churches than ever ; 
for every one will come to them then, and worship, in 
all its threefold forms, shall rise up over all the lands 
like clouds over the sea. And sermons ? Yes, we will 
have sermons still, the fresh, free utterances of living 
souls, inspiring, rather than inculcating, the Absolute 
Religion of love to God and love to man. And the 



230 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



holy will in each of us shall grow strong in God's 
House of Prayer ; and if there be a kind or loving act 
to be performed, a vice to be forsworn, a pardon to be 
asked, a justice to be done, a reconciliation to be effected, 
we shall seize that blessed time to do it. Thus shall 
we hallow the Sunday of the future, thus make it no 
longer a mockery to call it " the Lord's Day," and hold 
on it the festival of him who taught us that the Sabbath 
was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. 



REPENTANCE. 



231 



SECTION IV. 

REPENTANCE. 

The various relations held by man to God divide them- 
selves very distinctly to our consciousness into those 
which concern us simply as His Creatures, and those 
which concern us as Sinners. In the first class of 
relations we are called on to love our Father, to be 
grateful to our Benefactor, to adore our Moral Ideal, 
to obey our Lord, to learn from our Teacher, to 
sympathize in the beauty of our Parent's works. In 
these relations all seems clear and inexpressibly happy. 
On the other side, when we attempt to scan the position 
in which we stand as Sinners, the whole scene is 
altered, and, instead of love and joy, " there remains 
nothing but a certain fearful looking for of judgment ; " 
that is, till we have found how these two relations 
may harmonize and have, by Repentance, blended into 
one sentiment of humble love the discordant elements 
of our condition. On the right comprehension of these 
relations, on the attaching of sufficient weight to both 
classes of them, depends, in a great measure, the 
healthfulness of all our religious life. He who forgets 
how near and dear is his natural tie to his Father in 
heaven will take views of the alienation produced by 



232 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



sin so dark and unnatural, that lie will either sink into 
despair, or grasp at the most monstrous schemes 
suggested for his salvation. On the other hand, he 
who forgets how completely his sins have altered the 
footing of creaturehood will be tempted to assume a 
position before Grod so false and presumptuous as to be 
fatal to any real religious progress whatever.* Nothing 
is more difficult than practically to hit the just medium 
in these matters ; our temperaments inclining us to one 
view or the other, and the instructions we receive in 
youth but too frequently deterring us from venturing to 
place our instinctive, childlike trust in the inexhausti- 
ble goodness of Grod f In the ensuing pages I shall 

* The myths of a "Fall" and Golden Age of Innocence show the 
antiquity and universality of the recognition of the grand distinction 
between these classes of relations between man and God. The ante- 
cedency of the first to the second is also pointed out by its supposed 
chronological priority. Man has always felt that he is first God's 
beloved son, and only secondarily a rebel. 

+ The practical difficulties of this subject have been also increased 
by the false ideas respecting the natural history of the soul which have 
been perpetuated by the pedantry of divines. It is always assumed by 
the Evangelical school that the inner life of all men has been one of 
unvaried sin till transformed suddenly or gradually by conversion. If 
there be any exceptions admitted, they are supposed to be rare cases of 
early piety, wherein the conversion took place in childhood. Now it 
would rather seem that it is only a small minority of persons whose 
lives can be thus described, who live up to full manhood and conscious- 
ness in unvarying wilful transgression, and then begin to ask that 
question (so dear to their dogmatic instructors), "What shall I do to 
be saved ? " Repentance seems more common, as well as more beau- 
tiful, in childhood than in later life. Nine out of ten of those who 



REPENTANCE. 



233 



endeavour to define, as well as may be, that Religious 
Duty of Man which arises out of the modification 
introduced by his sins into his relation to God; namely, 
the Duty of Repentance. 

And I may here remark that (strange though it be) 
it is precisely this Duty of Repentance which has the 
highest part to play in our religious life, whose per- 
formance, more than all others, brings us into the 
innermost sanctuary of the temple. Paradoxical as 
it may seem, we have all a vague sense of this : 
that our prayers of penitence more closely concern 
our souls, are more personal, more intimate, more 
awful by far, than our Thanksgivings or acts of 
Adoration, or even prayers for light and help. We 
repeat these other prayers and praises in public, or 
speak of God's benefits to any sympathizing friend. 
But our Repentance is profaned by almost any exposure 
save that needed by restitution. How is this anomaly to 
be accounted for ? I believe we may find the explana- 
tion in the profound words of McLeod Campbell : " It is 
on the side of a sense of sin that the sinful creature must 
first come into contact with infinite Holiness" All the 
great preachers of the past, and all the preachers who 
may touch men's hearts in time to come, must work 

ever become religious in this world have surely repented over and over 
again, and tried the whole penitential systems of their respective sects, 
before they arrive at any decided course of virtue — repented, not merely 
of special sins or lapses, as " converted " persons are admitted to do, 
but of whole courses of irreligion, breaking all continuity in their 
spiritual history. 



234 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



through, this one channel to the depths of our nature. 
If we are ever to know that " the Kingdom of Heaven 
is at hand/' the first word of the prophet who opens it 
to us must be " Repent/' Let us strive to give some 
true ideas of this great mystery. 

When we become thoroughly sensible how vastly sin 
has modified our position towards God, we become, at the 
same time, conscious that this modification must itself 
be modified before we can approach Him. If we are to 
address Him, it must not be as sinning creatures, but 
as creatures who have sinned and repent. Some sort 
of Atonement (in the true meaning of the word), some 
Reunion with God by a return to righteousness, is 
recognised as the preliminary step to any act of accept- 
able homage, Righteousness and unrighteousness car* 
have no communion. God being immutably Righteous, 
we must pass back into the realm of the eternal Right 
ere we can meet Him. In other words, it is only when 
the righteous will in man awakes and resumes its 
sovereignty that he can come in contact with the 
great Will of the universe. 

Thus far all is clear, and there is no difference in the 
doctrines of Christian, Moslem, or Parsee, any more 
than there can be a doubt that it is a primary religious 
duty of the sinner thus to repent. But when this moral 
change has taken place, when the man actually returns 
to the path of obedience, is the religious act of repent- 
ance complete? Is Repentance merely commensurate 
with Reformation? and can we justly consider ourselves 



REPENTANCE. 



235 



at one with. God from the moment in which we resolve 
to obey His law for the future ? 

I suppose it will be granted on all hands that, to 
complete reformation into repentance, it is needful that 
our moral change should assume its natural religious 
aspect ; namely, that it should be accompanied by 
contrition, or grief at haying offended our good and 
holy God, and express itself in prayer, that prayer 
which is the infant's lifting of the hands that it may 
be taken again to its mother's heart. These feelings 
and acts are only natural results of the relation of a 
repenting creature to Grod, and no doubt can well exist 
as to their necessity for meeting that relation. 

But now, again, this Reformation completed into 
religious Repentance by contrition and prayer — is this 
enough ? Is man reconciled to God, and may he 
consider himself in his right position with Him, when 
he has thus repented ? 

Here divide for ever sacerdotal and intuitional 
theology ! While intuition tells us that we are at one 
with our God, and while our hearts repose in peace and 
joy, which reason refuses to treat as visionary, and faith 
forbids us to suppose bestowed otherwise than in un- 
clouded love, the churches proclaim that we are in utter, 
gross, fatal delusion. We are not reconciled to God, 
nor He to us. Our sins must be "pardoned" before 
God can love us or hear our prayers, nay, before our 
acts of social or personal virtue cease "to have the 
nature of sin." And this " pardon " God can only 



236 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



grant, and man can only receive, on conditions the most 
appalling and the most perplexing ! 

I shall not here attempt to touch these wondrous 
" schemes of salvation" — the atonement of the Cross, 
remission through faith, or systems of sacramental 
penance and absolution.* The concern of the philo- 
sophic moralist is simply with the questions, "Does 
God pardon human offences against His law ? " " In 
what sense does He do so ? " Let us in the first place 
ascertain, if possible, the precise meaning of this word 
" pardon. " 

" Pardon" has two significations : — 1st. "Wh.en a man 

* A simple account of these as existing in all the religions of the 
world would form a most serviceable basis for what might be called a 
scientific religious anthropology. Neither the Taurobolia nor the 
Egyptian sacrifice of the accursed red ox were so remarkable and signi- 
ficative as the Mexican ceremonies lately brought to light (Helps's 
Spanish Conquest, vol. ii.). In the month corresponding to Lent the 
priests of the supreme god called the people to repentance by the sound 
of a shrill flute, intended to represent the voice of conscience. After 
ten days' public lamentation and prayer for forgiveness of sins, the 
image of the god (with a golden ear to represent his readiness to hear 
supplications) was brought forth, and a beautiful youth, who had for a 
year received every honour and instruction, was solemnly sacrificed. 
The bleeding heart of the victim was then eaten by the nobles. There 
was another sacrament, less terrible, in Peru : — " The Mamaconas of the 
Sun, who resembled Nuns of the Sun, made a small loaf of maize flour, 
tinged and kneaded with the blood taken from a white sheep that day 
sacrificed. Then they commanded the visitors from all the provinces 
to enter, and, having placed them in order, the priests of the ascer- 
tained lineage of Lluquiyupanqui gave to every one a morsel " (Acosta, 
Hist. Nat., lib. v. c. 23). 



REPENTANCE. 



237 



offends any one of his fellow-creatures, and believes 
that the offended person resents it, he may ask him to 
pardon the offence by ceasing to feel any resentment 
for it, and restoring to him the share of his good-will or 
affection possessed before his transgression. 2nd. When 
a man commits an offence, and expects that he will be 
punished for it, he may ask the person whom he expects 
to inflict the penalty to pardon the offence by remitting 
the punishment. Let us see how either of these mean- 
ings of the word can apply to the case of God and 
man* 

For any possibility to arise of God's forgiving sin in 
the sense of ceasing to feel resentment against the 
sinner, it is, of course, necessary that He should first 
be capable of feeling that resentment. 

Does any sound theology warrant us in believing 
that God feels resentment ? 

The most obvious view of the case is, that such a 
thing can never be predicted of the Supremely Good 
One ; that we are all of us, " the oldest and wickedest 
of us, in His sight but little children/' whom He 
punishes only for our good, as a mother corrects her 
wayward infants, and without one shade dimming the 
everlasting light of His infinite love. TTe feel at once 
that such is the highest ideal of a human parent, and, 

* Trench distinguishes the first of these acts as "forgiveness ;" the 
second, as "pardon" {Lectures to Ladies, p. 226). The distinction 
would be convenient, but does not appear to be usually recognised. See 
the quotations in Johnson's Diet,, art. " Pardon/' 



238 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



a fortiori, of a Divine Creator, to whom none of the 
impatience which detracts from the perfection of our 
love can ever be possible. According to the beautiful 
w r ords of Ramsay, " A Being that loves essentially all 
His creatures — a Being that had no other design in 
creating them but to make them happy for ever and 
ever in the knowledge and love of His boundless per- 
fections — a Being that knows, wills, and employs con- 
tinually all the means necessary to lead all His intel- 
ligent creatures, without exception, to their ultimate 
and supreme [virtue and] happiness — can never become 
indifferent about them, cease to interest Himself in 
them, and abandon them to everlasting misery, tie 
can never be disgusted with their imperfections ; He can 
never take any pleasure in their sufferings : all His 
punishments, therefore, must be remedies, and all his 
severities salutary cures. He can never cease to pity 
and succour but when His remedies become useless and 
the patients incurable, which we shall show to be impos- 
sible. ... It is, therefore, a poor, weak reasoning 
in some to prove the necessity of a revelation by this 
frivolous argument — that without one we could never 
be assured, after sin, that God is appeasable. This 
poor, insignificant notion degrades and humanizes the 
Deity, as if He could be really incensed, angry, or 
altered by our vices." * "Anger," saith the Kaliph Ali, 
"even when just, is disgraceful." Of all the dis- 
honourable things which anthropomorphous creeds have 
* Chevalier Ramsay's Philosophical Principles, b. ii. 



REPENTANCE. 



239 



taught men to think of God, next to cruelty, must be 
placed the "wrath" and "fury" and "vengeance" 
which make of the serene Deity of Heaven a prototype 
of the raging despots of earth. 

Dismissing, however, with due reprobation, those 
gross and heathenish notions which would thus repre- 
sent God as feeling against the sinner a resentment 
analogous to the evil passions of humanity, we find 
there is still a very deep problem to be solved before we 
can decide that there is nothing altered in the loving 
relation of Creator to creature by the sin of the latter. 
To affirm this would be tantamount to affirming that 
a faithful, obedient, and adoring child of God gains 
from Him nothing more of love than a rebel and blas- 
phemer. Let it be granted that God does love and pity 
the wretch who revolts against His blessed laws and 
chooses misery instead of joy ; that He pities him as a 
mother pities her refractory child, and does all to lead 
him back into that way of peace for which He made 
him, and whither He foresees he shall sooner or later 
return. But does God love no more than this the 
heart which gives itself wholly to Him, which seeks 
Him hourly, and consecrates its all of existence to His 
will ? I believe that for the answer to this question 
we must fall back on the doctrine of the proper Eternity 
of God. As I have so often repeated, He has made all 
intelligencies for everlasting virtue and piety, and He 
foresees that blessed state for all : nay, to Him the 
worst of sinners is now (in a sense) the seraph that he 



240 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



shall be in the millenniums of future immortality. That 
love which a Holy God could giye to the most pure and 
faithful soul, God keeps for every man : it is, as it were, 
there waiting for him in the Infinite Heart of his 
Creator.* And as there is no present or future to God, 
there is no need for change in His awful sentiments 
(if we may use such a word) to accompany the change 
in the repentant creature's soul. It is to God all 
one — all an eternal and immutable now of absolute 
love. 

But to the creature who lives in time, and undergoes 
vast changes in his unceasing progress, there must 
needs be this difference — that he cannot feel or know 
the relation of an obedient soul to its loving Lord till 
he become obedient, and each successive degree in the 
warmth of the Divine love must be discovered by his 
own progressing spirit travelling nearer to its rays. 
It is all in ourselves that the change must be wrought ; 
but not the less does that change involve the whole 
nature of our relation to God. If we desire that most 
blessed love which God gives to an obedient soul, there 
is no use whatever in trying to persuade ourselves we 
possess it while we remain disobedient. To us, children 
of time, it is a future thing : we cannot feel or know 
ourselves to possess it now. It lies hidden for us in the 
vastest deep of Deity. God's pitying love for us as 
sinners ; His will to bring us back into His fold — that 
is all we properly possess now, all we can know or feel. 
But let us turn to our Father in true repentance, and 



REPENTANCE. 



241 



the case is changed. That act by which the holy will 
within us asserts its law, and resolves to obey the right 
and love Him who is righteous, opens the portals of 
heaven to our gaze, and we may see and feel thenceforth 
ever more and more of that ineffable glory and ecstatic 
joy which awaits us in the love which God gives to 
" those that love Him." 

If these views be true, the Forgiveness of sins, in 
the sense of a cessation of Divine Resentment, is on this 
wise : God has no resentment, therefore there can be 
no cessation of it ; neither is God mutable, therefore 
there can be no change in any of His eternal sentiments, 
Nevertheless, God does love in a peculiar manner His 
obedient children, and this love (though always existing 
in Him previsional of their future deserts) they can only 
experience when obedient. The return to obedience, 
then, actually gains for them something from God ; 
namely, the sense, which before they had not, of His 
peculiar love. They are "forgiven" (if we choose to 
retain a word consecrated by such natural simplicity of 
metaphor) when they are allowed to feel God's love as 
He gives it to His obedient children. All the feelings 
which have been imaged in so many millions of hearts 
by the words " reconciliation," "atonement," and " par- 
don," have a meaning, and a most profound one, though 
error must have crept in wherever any mutability was 
attributed to the immutable God. It is all in us that 
God's forgiveness is wrought from beginning to end ; 
but it is not less a real transaction on that account. 

M 



2 ±2 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



The second meaning of the term "forgiveness" im- 
plies the remission of the punishment due to the offence. 
Can God, consistently with justice, goodness, and immu- 
tability, remit punishment ? In my former work | Theory 
of Intuitive Morals, p. 56). I endeavoured to demonstrate 
that God executes punishment on all sin in His double 
capacity of Sovereign Judge of the universe, and of 
Father of Spirits. As Judge, He executes the eternal 
Law by inflicting equivalent retribution on every offender 
against that law ; as Father, He inflicts on all His chil- 
dren the correction which their moral welfare demands. 
The justice which works Pi etribution and the goodness 
which works Correction are in absolute harmony in in- 
flicting the punishment which results in the same great 
end ; namely, the fulfilment of the eternal Eight, and the 
Virtue of rational souls in which that Eight is imper- 
sonated. If God were less just, He would be less good : 
if He were less good, He would be also less just. 

Now, I ask, on these grounds, what room is there for 
the remission of the punishment of sin ? Shall we ask 
the Judge of the universe to forego the demands of the 
everlasting Law, and to inflict on us less retribution 
than we have been proved to deserve ? Shall we ask 
the Father of our spirits to withhold the correction 
which He has seen is necessary to purge and heal our 
sick and sinful soids, and restore them to virtue ? 

Here, as in so many other cases, nothing but im- 
perfect comprehension of the nature of the boon they 
sought could ever have induced men to proffer the 



REPENTANCE. 243 

petitions whose acceptance would be alike dishonouring 
to God and disastrous to man. At a low stage of the 
moral life, before Yirtue is recognised as far more desir- 
able than Happiness, it is natural that we should desire 
to escape from punishments whose place in the great 
justice of the world we do not understand, and whose 
salutary effects on our souls we neither know nor 
appreciate. The child-man cries to his Father to take 
away the medicine which that Father knows is necessary 
for him in all its bitterness. Further on, we arrive at 
the stage of miracle when we imagine that eternal jus- 
tice may, in some incomprehensible way, be compounded 
with by other sufferings than those of the sinner, and 
that, by an equally marvellous alchemy, our moral 
restoration may be effected by the " imputation" of a 
righteousness not our own. When these ideas are dis- 
carded, and the soul stands, loaded with all its sins, 
face to face with its Judge and Father, there would be 
nothing for it but despair, were it obliged still to retain 
that hideous dogma on w r hich the whole popular system 
of fallacies respecting the forgiveness of sins finds its 
ultimate support— the doctrine of the eternity of future 
punishment. Once let the monstrous assumption be 
admitted that the crimes of a finite being (finite in 
number, and graduated in guilt) actually deserve in- 
finite Retribution— once admit this, I say, and there is 
necessarily an end of all that resignation to God's 
punishments which befits alike the free moral intel- 
ligence who admits and adores the justice of his doom 3 

m 2 



244 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



and the loving child of God, who blesses the hand 
which holds to his lips the medicine which shall heal 
his soul. The thought of our own everlasting perdition, 
of our eternal banishment from God and goodness, is a 
thought which the soul cannot, and ought not, to be 
able to face. That Virtue which is threatened to be 
taken away from a man for ever is the share committed 
to him in the great end of the universe — it is the one 
thing he is to desire now and for ever. To tell him to 
renounce it, and submit resignedly to final reprobation, 
is not merely to call on him for a sacrifice beyond his 
natural powers (as it has been usually represented), but to 
ask him to content himself with that wherewith he ought 
not to be contented. No amount of religion or virtue 
could help a man to renounce religion and virtue for all 
eternity. Thus, then, if our sins did deserve infinite 
punishment, man would be placed in the awful dilemma 
between the impossibility of resigning himself to such 
retribution, and the fresh crime of revolting against 
God's just retribution on his sins. But the difficulty 
vanishes when we see that this whole Castle of Despair, 
which has been frowning over the world for ages, is 
founded on no rock of intuition, deep as man's nature 
and wide as his race, but on such crumbling base as 
the uncertain meaning of a few uncertain words in a 
book of most uncertain authority ! On these, and these 
alone, confessedly rests a doctrine which stultifies all 
human sense of justice and of goodness, which renders 
the whole meaning and end of creation utterly incom- 



REPENTANCE. 



245 



prehensible,* and throws into the relation of creature to 
Creator an element of inextinguishable disunion. But 
rejecting once for all this hideous tenet of the existence 
of a world of reprobation, how simple instantly becomes 
the duty of sinful man to his Divine Judge ! We have 
sinned, and we know that God will punish us propor- 
tionately to our sin ; but could we wish that it should be 
otherwise ? Do we not love justice in the abstract, as the 
sacred principle whose manifestation we long to trace 
in every page of human history ? Do we not adore it 
personified in the blessed God, whose glory woidd fade 
away out of our sight could we believe Him ever to 
forego that holy law of everlasting justice ? So far 
from wishing that God should "forgive" us, in the 
sense of remitting the punishment due to our sins, we 
should rather cry, even from the depths of our crushed 
hearts, " Even so let us suffer, Father ; for so it seemeth 
good in Thy sight. Shall not the Judge of all the 
earth do right ? " 

Thus, even as regards Retribution, the religious man 
may willingly resign himself to the punishment which 
will be meted to him by that Justice which he adores. 
Still more easy and simple it ought to be for him to 
submit himself to that Correction which, in the same 

* If we suppose that God created man for any good end whatever — 
virtue, piety, or happiness — it is attributing to the All-Wise actual 
fatuity to assert that man will not reach that end. God must have 
foreseen the result of His creation of every man, woman, and child. 
Did He foresee it to he good or bad ? 



246 



KELIGIOt T S OBLIGATIONS. 



suffering, will heal his sin and help him onward on the 
path towards his anxiously desired end of virtue and 
religion. There ought here to be but little difficulty. 
If we desire Virtue above Happiness (as we must do if 
we truly desire virtue at all), then such loss of happi- 
ness as God causes expressly to promote our virtue 
ought to be accepted by us thankfully, as the best ser- 
vice which can be done to us. There is no more thought 
now of praying for the remission of a punishment, which 
punishment would entail our everlasting exclusion from 
virtue. It is a medicine, not a poison, which is contained 
in our Father's cup ; and each of His true sons will say, 
" That which He hath given me, shall I not drink 
it ? " 

For all these reasons, I conceive that to pray for the 
Forgiveness of sins, in the sense of the Remission of 
their due punishment, is at once unphilosophical and 
irreligious. It is unphilosophical, as a petition to the 
immutably just and good God to forego justice, and to 
substitute an injurious mercy for that goodness which 
would promote our highest welfare. It is irreligious, 
as the expression of a desire that the absolute per- 
fection of the Divine Justice should be infringed upon 
for our sakes, and that the means should not be taken 
which will lead us to God and goodness. 

Does repentance, however (it will be asked), make no 
difference in the outvmrd' condition of man, as well as it 
does, so wondrously, in the inward, when it admits us 
to the help of the Divine Spirit and ^ the sense of the 



REPENT AXCE. 



247 



Divine love ? Like Manlius of old, we have seen that 
the Father of the world will embrace His offending son ; 
but will He also likewise condemn him to the full penalty 
of his offence ? 

At this point we fall back at once on those physical 
laws in whose chain we have seen there is no room for 
any direct agency of prayer. The sequence of cause 
and effect which sin has commenced cannot be stopped 
by Repentance. The penitent drunkard's constitution 
will not be restored : the awakened sluggard's fields 
will not bear the harvests he neglected to sow.* The 

* That these doctrines of modern philosophy are also those of the 
most ancient Judaism, has been lately maintained by a very liberal and 
learned Jew, Dr. Philippsohn, in his Lectures on the Development of the 
Religious Idea. He says (p. 46, trans.), 4 1 As Judge, God suffers the 
natural consequences to follow upon sin, and thus leaves it not uncon- 
demned. But sin is not only a material act ; it is also a condition of 
the soul in relation to God. It has interrupted and checked the soul 
of man in its approach to its Maker. It is God's mercy that calls the 
penitent, that forgives transgression, removes the obstacles in his 
path, and brings the sinner's soul back to Himself. Such is the doc- 
trine of Mosaism." "That such is the true doctrine there is no doubt ; 
but how far the Jewish, or the Christian Maurice are critically justified 
in asserting that such ideas really belong to a Book which, though 
assumed to be Divinely adapted for that purpose, has failed for 3000 
years to teach them, till they arose (apparently logically enough) out 
of 'the metaphysical philosophy and free theology of our own times — 
this is a question which demands great learning and marvellous honesty. 
It is clear enough that there is much "new wine" in the world just 
now. Is it not strange to find it so pertinaciously served to us in 
the "old bottles ?" Did any one Joiow they held it a hundred years 
ago? 



248 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



fresh accumulation of ill-desert is indeed arrested ; no 
new debts to the Divine Justice are incurred ; and this, 
of course, has its important influence. Also the re- 
newed vigour acquired by the righteous will may lead 
a man in various ways out of the sphere of his former 
evil life. He who abandons himself to vice has all nature 
against him ; for her laws have been regulated by Grod 
to check iniquity, and to foster temperance, chastity, 
industry, and the benevolent affections. He who de- 
votes himself to Virtue throws himself at once on the 
side of Omnipotence, and has all nature in his favour. 
But still the punishments he has already merited, and 
which the just God, through His physical laws in this 
world, or through His unknown arrangements of the 
next, has prepared for him, those punishments he must 
suffer. A priori it is clear that, according to God's im- 
mutable justice, it ought to be so : a posteriori it is so 
manifest that such is actually the course of Providence, 
that the creeds which have adopted the doctrine of the 
Pemission of the punishment of sin are obliged con- 
stantly to refer it to the punishments of that unseen 
world of whose condition we are practically ignorant, 
because it is patent that no such remission takes place 
here.* 

* It is a remarkable chapter in human history, that of the belief in 
the possibility of obtaining E emission of the punishment' of sin, and it 
is curious to notice with what contempt each adherent of the doctrine 
is inclined to regard the same fundamental idea when presented under 
another garb from that which is familiar to him. Heathens of the 
higher class of minds looked with horror at the doctrine of a remission 



REPENTANCE. 



249 



Very deep and very beautiful are the ideas of 
Repentance which result from the acceptance of these 
views of the Divine forgiveness of sin. !No sooner is 
the fearful weight of the doctrine of infinite punishment 

to be gained by vicarious atonement. "You believe," says Cicero 
{Be Natur. Deor., lib. iiL), "that the Decii, in devoting themselves to 
death, appeased the gods. How great, then, was the iniquity of the 
gods, who could not be appeased but at the price of such noble blood ! " 
Christians, on the other hand, habitually treat as highly derogatory to 
God the idea that He could remit sins without atonement. Nor is it 
till this atonement has reached that point which to the natural moral 
intuition of man appears the ultimate condition of injustice (namely, 
the infliction of the punishment on a perfectly sinless substitute for the 
sinner) that the orthodox mind proclaims itself satisfied with the 
scheme proposed for the reconciliation of the Divine Justice with its 
own impunity from deserved retribution. Where the remission is 
sought by any lesser injustice or sacrifice the same judgment is always 
passed. Even the terrific se//-immolations of the Hindoo are deemed 
to prove nothing but an evil nature in the poor devotee, while the 
belief in the immolation of another for the same atonement is the sole 
saving virtue of the Christian. "The doctrine of works of supereroga- 
tion," says Cooke Taylor (Hist. Mohamed, p. 274), "and the corollary 
that atonement may be made for crime by vicarious penance, exist in 
Hindustan at the present hour, and the writings of Origen show us 
that opinions so gratifying to our corrupt nature were extensively spread 
over the East in the early ages of Christianity. " 

Truly it is a blessed thing to turn from all such wretched results of 
ignorance of the entire harmony of God's Justice and Goodness, and 
say with Channing, " I dare not ask Christ to offer an infinite satisfac- 
tion for my sins, to appease the wrath of God, to reconcile the universal 
Father to His own offspring, to open to me those arms of Divine mercy 
which have encircled and borne me from the first moment of my being. 
The essential and unbounded goodness of my Creator is the foundation 
of my hope, and a broader and a surer the universe cannot give me." 

M 3 



250 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS 



removed, than the heart instantly springs up like a 
fresh fountain into the sunshine of peace and love. The 
crouching slave shrinks no more from the lash with the 
pitiful cry, " Spare us, good Lord ! Deal not with us 
according to our sins, neither reward us according to 
our iniquities." The degradation, which lay in the sin 
itself, is not further deepened by the cowardice which 
was inevitable while that sin's impending punishment 
was supposed to be infinite. The one noble sentiment 
which remains for the fallen is open to him now, and 
by it he rises again in mournful, yet in manly dignity, 
before his Father's judgment-seat : — " Punish me, for 
I have deserved punishment. Purify me through 
suffering, for I long to be pure. That eternal and all- 
sacred law which I have broken demands retribution 
on my head. Turn not aside for me the justice for 
which I adore Thee ! My heart is full of sin and 
pollution till I am sick of my wickedness. Heal Thou 
me, 0 my Father, by any medicine, however bitter, 
Thou knowest to be best." 

In these two solemn thoughts — expiation, or the free 
acceptance of deserved Retribution; and purification, or 
the grateful submission to merciful Correction— lie the 
essential supports of a Repentance such as befits a being 
who is both a moral free agent, capable of judging him- 
self 1 and submitting intelligently to his judgment, and a 
child of God, knowing and desiring above all things 
the blessed end for which his Father chastises him. 
The soul is humbled indeed by thoughts like these ; 



REPENTANCE. 



251 



but it is far from being degraded. It is saddened, but 
with its sorrow blends a pure and holy joy. " Fear 
hath torment but love, and trust, and resignation, 
bring peace even to the conscience tortured by remorse. 

Repentance thus understood, as springing simply 
from the relation of sinful man to God, differs in 
many shades from the representations commonly made 
of the act. I shall enumerate a few of these differ- 
ences. 

1st. As I have said, it is wholly fearless, and, instead 
of shrinking from punishment, freely submits to it as 
Retribution and thankfully accepts it as Correction.* 

2nd. It is full of faith in (rod's readiness to restore 
the soul. It prays with the confidence of a child who 
knows that its father only waits for the prayer to bless 
him. Xo hesitation on this point is possible ; for God is 
known to have created the soul expressly for virtue and 
piety, and to will that end immutably, now and for 
ever. Confession to a priest, penance, absolution, belief 
in a certain theological scheme of pardon, hope through 
an atonement or a human or Divine mediator— ail 
these are seen to be entirely foreign to the simple act 
by which the Prodigal rises and goes to that loving 
Father, who meets him even while ^ yet he is a great 
way off," and looks for no sacrifice save that of the 

* "S'il arrive que je commette des failles pour lesquelles il faille 
livrer mon corps et rnon arne je les livre. . . . S'il me reste quelque 
peche dont je n'ai pas eu soin de me purifier, je me soumets avec' joie 
aux maux, a la punitiou." — Zend-Av:sta, Patets. 



252 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



" contrite heart" ere he seals the kiss of peace upon his 
weeping eyes.* 

3rd. True Repentance is directly and simply Repent- 
ance for sin. It is not sorrow that we haye incurred 
the risk of punishment, which (for all that it is preached 
so often) is nothing but a base and hound-like fear. It 
is not regret that we have contributed to necessitate the 
sacrifice of a noble and beloyed substitute, which, 
though (in the supposed case) a right sentiment, has 
nothing whatever directly to do with religion, or the 
soul's grief for having broken God's laws. True 
Repentance is not diverted from its proper task by any 
imagery of fear or pity : it has enough to do to contem- 
plate the plain and dreadful fact that we have disobeyed 
the eternal law of our blessed God. It is for this we are 
to sorrow ; and if our grief be not more acute and more 
spontaneous for this cause than for any other, I can 
only say we delude ourselves in fancying we Repent ; 
we are not sorry for our sin, whatever else we may be 
sorry for. 

Lastly. The Repentance of a believer in God's 
absolute goodness ought to be a far deeper and more 
awful one than that of another man. He has recog- 

* ' * Thou desirest not sacrifice. .... The sacrifices of God are a 
broken spirit : a broken and a contrite heart, 0 God, thou wilt not 
despise. ' ' — Psalm li. 

' * He who purifies himself in the river of a subdued spirit . . . will 
be liberated ; but liberation cannot be attained by any outward observ- 
ance/' — Punchu Tuntru, by Vishnu Shurma. 



REPENTANCE. 



253 



nised what sublime and tremendous thing is the ever- 
lasting Moral Law of the universe. For this all-holy 
Law — for the virtue which lies in obedience to it — he 
believes that the worlds are cradles and Immortality 
man's day of work. Xo words can tell how great, how 
stupendous to him, is the thought of this law ; yet he 
has broken it ! He, the worm of earth, the child of 
yesterday, has disobeyed the law which binds all the 
clusters of the heavens, which stretches over the 
eternities of the past and the future ! But the repent- 
ant Atheist might feel all this. There is a sting far 
sharper in the wounded spirit of the Theist. He has 
broken no mere abstraction of a law. However solemn 
and sacred its obligation even as such would be, over 
him it has tenfold that right : it is Gtod's law. 

It is a miserable thing to offend any one we love and 
respect. Perhaps it does not often happen to us in 
mature life to feel this pang ; but the son whose selfish- 
ness has darkened a mother's age, the wife who has 
betrayed a loving and honoured husband, doubtless 
know well the nature of that grief which, in its childish 
form, used to seem enough to burst our infant hearts. 
Such is the misery of self-reproach under such circum- 
stances, that, sooner than face it, men are commonly 
base enough to seek to palliate their ingratitude by 
maligning the character or undervaluing the benefits of 
the person whom they have offended. Where this is 
impossible, or where the voice of conscience makes 
itself heard too plainly to permit of recourse to such 



254 RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 

vile expedients, the sentiment of repentance towards 
our beloved but injured friend is probably one of the 
keenest emotions to be produced by man's social 
relations with his kind. But what are, or ought to be, 
such regrets compared with our repentance towards that 
God whom we may entirely honour, entirely love, to 
whom we owe everything ? It is the very magnitude, 
the enormity of our perversity and ingratitude, which 
prevents us from feeling them as we ought to do. We 
cannot believe that yesterday's easy and yet unpunished 
sin — the lie, the anger, the unkindness, the selfishness, 
were actually offences against the Lord of heaven and 
earth ; disobedience to commands enforced by every 
most sacred right and every most tender claim. 

At each advancing stage of the religious life the 
guilt committed at that stage is necessarily enhanced in 
all ways. Each fresh ray of light which has dawned on 
us renders us more inexcusable for neglecting to obey 
that which we see more and more clearly to be right. 
Low creeds and low stages of religion possess excuses 
for sins almost amounting, in some cases, to complete 
exculpation ; but he who has truly learned the faith 
that " God is good " need seek no palliation evermore 
for his offences in the plea of want of broadest sun- 
light. 

Still more does advancing religious life heighten the 
guilt of sin by heaping up fresh mountains of mercies, 
over which the offender must needs trample on his path 
to crime. Every lesson God has taught us, every joy 



REPENTANCE, 



255 



of communion He has granted, every sin He has swept 
away from the cloudless heaven of His love, stands up 
in judgment against us. There is no measuring the 
weight which attaches itself to the wilful and deliberate 
disobedience of a soul which has " tasted of the heavenly 
gift." * And though a true faith teaches us that it is 
not " impossible" for such a one to renew all its spiritual 
life once more by repentance —but, on the contrary, that 
sooner or later, in this world or the next, it will 
assuredly do so — yet that very knowledge of God's 
infinite goodness and long-suffering adds but the last 
deepest stain to its ingratitude and crime. 

And again : it is not merely definite repentances 
for definite sins which the enlightened conscience feels 
or ought to feel most deeply. It is not the occasional 
falls or stumbles on our path of duty (shameful though 
they be) that we most bitterly lament. No ; it is, that 
the whole path has been on too low a plane of being ; 
that we have been plodding along the shore amused 
with pebbles, when we should have scaled the cliff. 
In those awful moments of the spiritual life when w r e 
gain the clearest glimpses into the cavernous depths of 
our own souls, it is, I am persuaded, nearly always this 
general sense of sinfulness which appals us, and not the 
special offences which we can dare to look at one by 
one and lay penitently at God's feet. And it is right 
it should be so. When death, in taking our human 
friend or parent, has opened our eyes to the reality of 
* Heb. vi. 4. 



256 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



our relations towards those whom we have lost, what is 
it nearly always in the past which stings us with such 
intolerable pain ? Not definite acts of perfidy, false- 
hood, unkindness or disobedience, half so much as the 
general failing of our love, and confidence, and tender- 
ness. As we think how we mistrusted their affection, 
or served them complainingly, or obeyed them sullenly ; 
how we constantly undervalued their characters, or lost 
the opportunity of intercourse, or remained thankless 
for their benefits — we feel as if we had swerved from our 
friendship or our filial duty more vilely than by twenty 
overt acts of offence. It were better to have spoken 
harsh words than to have distrusted our friend. It 
were better to have disobeyed our parent than to 
have served him with clouded brow and grudging 
spirit. 

And is not this the experience of us all as regards 
our Friend and Father in Heaven ? He has said to us 
in. tones of unutterable love, " Give me thine heart." 
And it is precisely our hearts we have not given Him, 
while we have offered Him slave- service and lip-service 
instead. 

It were well if we could recognise, once for all, that 
this general swerving of the heart and low level of 
moral and spiritual life constitutes the just ground for 
our deepest penitence. Not seeing that it is so, those 
who have recognised the great truth, that it is on the 
side of a sense of sin that the finite creature must 
approach nearest to Infinite Holiness, and who therefore 



REPENTANCE. 



257 



rightly cherish the sense of penitence as the deepest 
spring of the religious life — these persons constantly fall 
into the error of striving to nourish such penitence by 
magnifying the enormity of trivial neglects and follies. 
But the mind receives only injury from such morbid 
morals. The " thousand talents " we all owe to God will 
never be made up by overscrupulous grief about little 
debts of mites and farthings. " Thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God with all thine heart, and soul, and strength." 
Let us give this, and the mites and farthings will all be 
paid to the uttermost. Our great sin is, that we do not 
pay it, not that we do not pay them. 

There is a strong tendency in our age towards a 
reaction from the terrific dread wherewith sin was 
regarded by the religious minds of earlier times. It 
appears that, with the fear of the Bottomless Pit con- 
tinually harassing and distorting the natural growth of 
the moral life, men did often allow their relation to 
God as sinners to swallow up the whole of religion. 
Not only the beautiful ties which unite us to Him as 
the Author of this lovely world and the Lord of Truth 
were forgotten altogether, but His whole Fatherhood 
was merged in His Judgeship, and that Goodness which 
claims our love was altogether hidden behind the 
Justice which demands our reverence. There was error 
in this, of course, as in all half-sided views ; and the 
very eagerness with which so many preachers urged 
that religion was not a gloomy thing showed clearly 
enough that (such as they felt it) it did not naturally 



258 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



manifest itself as a principle of life and joy. Yet, dark 
and imperfect as were such views of our condition, 
I cannot but think they were better and truer than 
any picture of it which omits those deep shades cast 
by actual wilful sin on the life of him who has com- 
mitted it. 

Paint the lights with all thy brightest hues, 0 
theologian ! thou wilt never make Grod's love or man's 
destiny so radiant as they truly are. But, at thy peril, 
leave not out the shadows, else the whole picture will 
be false, and the lights themselves will lose half their 
glory. It is a wicked world : there is no use making 
flimsy veils to cover its ugly features. It is as delusive 
to ignore human vice as it is fanatical to ignore human 
virtue. Love and truth are indeed (like health and 
competence) the rules of mortal life, and cruelty and 
falsehood (like sickness and want) no more than excep- 
tions. But they are exceptions so common and so 
great that they must needs be given a large space in 
every just view of man's existence. Our own individual 
sins — the sins we have committed from childhood till 
to-day — are realities, most heavy and awful realities. 
The very brightness which our happier faith permits us 
to see, in the heavenly destiny of our race and in the 
cloudless sunshine of God's countenance, ought to make 
the black shadows of our sins stand forth tenfold more 
sharply than under a gloomier sky. Sin ought to be 
far more dreadful to us than it is to others, never in the 
remotest degree less so. 



REPENTANCE. 



259 



If such repentance as this be really ours, most eager 
will be our efforts to return once and for ever into the 
path of duty. This it is which alone can prove any 
mere feeling of contrition worthy of Grod's regard ; nor 
should whole floods of passionate tears be permitted to 
cheat us into the belief that we repent, unless w T ith 
them is borne away every desire to repeat our sin, 
unless in the place of unholy w r ishes we find springing 
up the most vigorous resolutions for future virtue.* 

* Perhaps it would be more true to say that mere feelings of con- 
trition are actually mischievous, and involve us only in fresh webs of 
sin, unless they lead immediately to actual reformation. How admi- 
rable are these remarks on the subject : — " The effect of getting up the 
feeling of piety, and stopping with, that, is like the effect of reading 
novels and nothing else. Thereby the feelings of benevolence, of piety, 
of hope, of joy, are excited, but lead to no acts ; the character becomes 
enervated, the mind feeble, the conscience inert, the will impotent. 
All the great feelings naturally lead to commensurate deeds : to excite 
the feeling and leave undone the deed is baneful in the extreme. I do 
not say novels are not good reading ; they are so just so far as they 
stimulate the intellect, the conscience, the affections, to healthful 
action, and set the man to work ; but just so far as they make you 
content with your feeling, and constrain the feeling to be nothing but 
feeling, they are pernicious. Such reading is mental dissipation. To 
excite the devotional feelings, to produce a great love of God, and not 
permit that to become work, is likewise dissipation all the more per- 
nicious, dissipation of the conscience and of the soul. Profligacy of the 
religious sentiment, voluptuousness in religion, is the most dangerous of 
luxuries." — Theodore Parker, Sermons, p. 320. 

"Edification," says Kant, "must be understood to mean the ethical 
purchase that devotion takes upon the actual amendment and building 
up of our moral characters. Many there are, however, who deem them- 
selves much edified by a discourse, psalmody, or book, when absolutely 



260 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



Repentance is the " turning back " in deed and word 
and thought as well as in mere feeling. Every one 
knows this. How is it to be done ? 

In the first place, of course, the wrong must be 
renounced — undone, if it be possible at any cost to undo 
it. It is a base thing to be so wedded to our past 
faults that we cannot find strength to repudiate them, 
to say, by our free act of reparation, " I renounce the 
injustice, the unkindness, the slander of yesterday." 
Those noble words, " I did wrong : forgive me," whose 
heart is it that does not really honour the manliness 
which speaks them ? Take the extremest case : a 
parent. What child is there that would not revere 
wdth tenfold sincerity a father or mother whom he 
saw thus show obedience to the principles they incul- 
cated by an effort whose magnitude he would be the 
first to comprehend ? 

There must be no reserving of our reputation when 
we repair a sin. The only reputation which we can 
claim is that of one who has done wrong and repents it. 
This, then, we must assume as completely as possible, 
leaving to God all consequences. Of course Personal 

nothing has been builded up, ay, where not even a finger has been 
stirred to help on the work. Possibly they think that the ethic dome 
will, like the walls of Thebes, rise to the harmonious concert of sighs 
and yearning wishes." — Schiller's Letters and Essays, p. 217. 

* 4 That strength by which an enemy cannot be overcome, that know- 
ledge of religion which does not produce religious actions, and those 
riches which are never enjoyed, are totally worthless." — Punchu 
Tuntru, by Vishnu Shurma. 



REPENTANCE. 



261 



and Religious offences and faults wherein our neighbour 
has no concern cannot require reparation towards him ; 
but if he has known them, even here we should surely 
hasten to undo any injury such knowledge may have 
done him. 

But supposing all possible reparation made for past 
sin, the great problem remains, How shall we guard 
against future transgression ? Many methods have 
been proposed for this, the paideutics of Ethics. One 
in particular, often connected with repentance, bears so 
importantly on the whole subject of practical morals 
that I must afford it full examination. This done, and 
its error, as I hope, demonstrated, it will be fitting to 
point out what appears a far better and more legitimate 
method of self-culture. 

Asceticism, or Self-Denial over and above the demands 
of God's law, has been recommended and adopted as a 
means for subjugating the flesh to the spirit by every 
known traditional religion, with the exception of Par- 
seeism. Is it, or is it not, a true mode of achieving this 
great object ? The presumption that it can prove so 
must rest on one or other of two grounds : first, that 
the self-sacrifice essential to virtue can be better prac- 
tised beyond the pale of the Moral Law than in the mere 
fulfilment of its behests ; or, secondly, that the suffering 
which is the medicine of sin can be supplied by our- 
selves as well as by God, and that there are occasions 
when He does not supply it, even though it be 
wanted. 



262 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



The first hypothesis may be thus defended : — " The 
aim recognised is to fulfil our moral obligations entirely 
and perfectly. To gain the ease and readiness of obedi- 
ence to conscience necessary to do this it appears desir- 
able to practise beforehand the self-command demanded. 
This practice, this moral gymnastic, we seek in the 
denial to ourselves of innocent pleasures or the inflic- 
tion on ourselves of unnecessary pains. We throw on 
the opponents of Asceticism the onus of showing our 
method to be false." 

Nay (returns the true moralist), but on the Ascetic 
lies the onus of showing that his assumption has any 
basis, and that it is desirable to practise moral gym- 
nastics. If this is to be done, it can only be by proving 
that obedience to all the demands of the law does not 
give his virtue sufficient field. The labourer who works 
all day to the full stretch of his muscles wants no 
gymnastics ; neither has the soldier in full career of 
battle any need of drill. But let any one consider what 
it means to obey all the commands of the law ; to fulfil 
all his own actual duties ; to be as loving, reverent, 
faithful, submissive to God as he ought to be ; to be 
absolutely true, chaste, temperate, and contented ; 
to do everything which his power of mind, body, or 
estate permit for the benefit of his neighbour. Does 
any one think that these tasks will be insufficient to 
give his strength enough exercise ? At all events, till 
he fulfil them perfectly, I know not what reason he 
can have to go about seeking fresh labours. On this 



REPENTANCE. 



263 



side, then, Asceticism is seen to rest on an assumption 
untenable the moment we recognise the stupendous 
magnitude of the actual demands of the eternal 
law. 

The second hypothesis is, that the Suffering which is 
admitted to be the medicine of sin can be applied by 
ourselves as well as by God. This also rests on a mon- 
strous assumption ; viz., that there are occasions when 
God's children require such medicine, and yet He, who 
must know the want so much better than they, and 
desire their health so much more, withholds or neglects 
to supply that needful suffering. 1S0 one who has any 
true sense of the fatherly care of our Creator can for a 
moment entertain such an idea. And that self-inflicted 
suffering would in any case form a substitute for that 
which God sends us, is another position which cannot 
be admitted. Of this I shall say more presently. It 
has now been shown that there is an improbability on 
the face of it that supererogatory Self-Denial can ever 
be a needful mode of self-culture. 

Further, there is much to be said in proof that this 
practice is not only needless, but morally wrong. Nearly 
every imaginable form of it involves the waste on fic- 
titious duties, of powers all claimed by real ones. As 
the Zend-Avesta says of Fasting, it is the exhaustion of 
bodily gifts which are all intrusted to us for good, 
and of whose waste we must give account. The self- 
infliction of pain must nearly always be injurious to 
our bodies ; these bodies which God has so wondrously 



264 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



fitted for eacli of us "to serve the purposes of the soul."* 
The refusal of the natural pleasures of life — food, exer- 
cise, sleep — are all refusals, simultaneously, of means of 
health, to which our kind Maker has attached those 
pleasures. A certain amount of each is what is best for 
our health, and consequently the right point of Tem- 
perance. If it be only demanded that we stop our en- 
joyments at that point, then there is no supererogatory 
self-denial in the case ; its pompous pretension is a 
mere iteration of the simple law. If it be asked that 
we stop short of that most healthful point of food, sleep, 
and exercise, then (unless it can be shown that we are 
doing some actual good thereby) we must come under 
the condemnation of " wasting our powers." I suppose 
it will here be urged, that as it is right to sacrifice 
health to Social duty {e.g., to attend the sick), it must 
a fortiori be right to sacrifice it to Personal duty {e.g., 
to conquer our base propensities). The question then 
resolves itself into this : Do we conquer those propen- 
sities by supererogatory denials of lawful enjoyment ? 
Of course the Ascetic and the Intuitionist will here join 
issue as to fact ; but, from the arguments just urged as 
to the improbability that such a mode of self-culture 
can be needful, I think an immense weight of positive 
evidence must be produced by the Ascetic to prove that 
his practices have been found successful. That temper- 
ance should not be as good an exercise as abstinence — 
I mean as great a one — few that have tried it will deny. 
* Marcus Aurelius, Medit., b. i. 



REPENTANCE. 



Thus, instead of the Ascetic gaining greater strength 
by greater efforts, he will often win the lesser by an 
easier though more pretentious task. 

But a more decisive objection to supererogatory Self- 
Denials is the Religious one. They are altogether out 
of keeping with our proper attitude towards God, and 
cannot fail to modify it injuriously. In whatever way 
we would regard our Creator, asceticism seems equally 
misplaced. We are His Pupils. Are we to learn 
other lessons than those He teaches ? We are His 
Workmen. Are we to waste our powers on our own 
devices ? We are His Patients. Are we to try to 
be our own physicians also ? Above all, we are his 
Children, punished by Him, whensoever we need it, 
with all the severity of infinite love. Shall we treat 
His chastisements as too light or too rare, and tell Him 
that we know better than He does what discipline we 
need ? 

One or other course must be right, and the opposite 
balefully wrong. Either we are to leave the discipline 
of our souls to the Divine Physician and Parent, or we 
are to take its direction into our own hands, leaving 
only to Him (what we cannot prevent His retaining) 
the power of adding still further sufferings, while we 
reject Hisjoz/s. 

In the first case the course of life is clear enough. 
Our concern will be solely with the performance of our 
duties as established by the eternal necessary law. 
Every vicious pleasure being forbidden, and every 



266 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



virtuous act and sentiment commanded, beyond these 
we assume that we have no other part to perform than 
that of grateful acceptance of all innocent pleasures and 
willing submission to all inevitable pains. It is our 
Maker's care that is to plant alike the thorns and 
flowers in our path. "We have but " to do justice, and 
to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God." To 
reject His flowers will be no less unfilial than to repine 
at His thorns. We can accept them all in childlike 
love and grateful submission. Every pleasure then will 
be holy, as God's dear gift and token of tenderness. 
We can thank Him for every one, and instead of feeling 
that we might please Him more by refusing, look up 
continually with the joyful knowledge that 

" To enjoy is to obey." 

It may be but the smallest toy of innocent delight, but 
it is our Father who has prepared it for us, and we can 
take our gratification in it under His loving eye. And 
every pain is no less hallowed. When we have found 
that by no lawful means we can escape it, then we are 
quite sure from whom it comes. Till we have tried 
those means, of course we cannot know that God 
intends us to suffer it, as He has prepared them also, 
and made it part of human work to discover and employ 
them ; but where help fails, then the inevitable suffer- 
ing is proved to be the medicine of our sin ; the trial 
sent to aid our virtue. Though man may be its 
medium, he cannot be its origin. Still less is it our 



REPENTANCE. 



267 



own fantastic choice. It is all Grod's doing, and there- 
fore (after condemning all voluntary humiliations), the 
prophet cries, " Hear the rod, and Him who hath ap- 
pointed it" * If in this simple course of obedience we 
fail and stumble, we know well what it is that we have 
done. We have broken the eternal Law of the universe 
— the law of which God Himself is the impersonation. 
Our sin is a reality — a most solemn and tremendous 
reality. There is no room for anything like playing at 
duty. Our repentance, too, must then be real. It 
must not be a turning inwards on self, but a turning 
away from self to Grod. Nothing makes conscience so 
clear, and at the same time so free from all morbidness 
and sickly self-introspection, as to stand thus face to 
face with a Being as pure and holy as we are stained 
and guilty. And at the same time, the punishment is 
then only felt to bear its true character when it is seen 
to come from another Will than our own — a Will 
whose judgment is infallible, and whose right to inflict 
the just retribution beyond all question. Self-inflicted 
punishment is an anomaly, f As Kant says, "it incloses 

* Micah vi. 9. 

t It is true that in a certain sense all just punishment may be said 
to be self-inflicted. In committing the crime, the criminal does an 
act which can only be righted by his punishment ; and his own moral 
will, which ever legislates the right, demands that that righting 
punishment be inflicted on him. Punishment is 4 'the other half of 
crime, " by a necessary, immutable union. He who commits a crime, 
by the very act implicates his own punishment, gives to it a consent 
which, in human concerns, justifies the State of which he is an equal 

N 2 



268 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



a contradiction, punishment demanding the sentence of 
another." * 

On the other hand, if we are to conduct our own 
moral therapeutics and discipline, we stand in a totally- 
different light, both as regards our pleasures and pains. 
The rejection of a pleasure being assumed to be a better 
method of self-culture than the acceptance of it, every 
natural pleasure becomes, at the least, questionable. 
Innocent it may be before the moral law ; it may be 
pure and temperate, interfering with no required 
mental or bodily exercise, preventing no act of kindness 
to our fellows whatsoever. But if its enjoyment be 
believed to be not the best thing we can do for our 
souVs welfare, then it ceases to be innocent subjectively. 
We must take it in an immoral spirit, believing that we 
should do better to reject it. No more simple and 
thankful looking to the Donor is then possible. We 
dare not thank God for a pleasure which we think we 
ought not to enjoy. The thought of Him must then be 
put away, and with it all that rendered the gratifica- 
tion good and holy.f From thinking He does not bless 

member (or, perhaps, head) in inflicting it in despite of any subsequent 
refusal of submission. The refusal can only come from his lower 
nature. There is something in the vilest of criminals which not only 
consents to, but demands, the just retribution of crime. But this is a 
very different thing from being his own judge and executioner. (See 
an article in Oxford Essays, 1855, on Hegel's Philosophy of Right.) 
* Kant, Ascetic of Ethics. 

f A Moslem who drinks wine at all is commonly a drunkard ? Why ? 



REPENTANCE. 



269 



our pleasures, there is but one step to feeling we rob 
them from Him. What religious alienations and what 
moral disorders have arisen from this very error it is 
impossible to calculate. Most injurious may be the 
consequences of persisting in any one enjoyment 
belonging to human nature after the acceptance of 
ascetic principles. And as that nature imperatively 
craves and extorts some indulgences (against which, be 
it remembered, the Creator has never armed us), the 
avoidance of such a course of alienation is all but im- 
possible. Another and equal danger is, that when we 
fail in executing any of our self- devised austerities, the 
whole action of the soul, being introspective, becomes 
altogether morbid. There is no escape from ourselves 
in the healthy contrition which turns simply to that 
Father whose Law we have broken. It is our own 
arbitrary rule from which we have swerved, and we 
only feel a sickening sense of self- contempt, so bitter 
and unwholesome that the chances are, we throw up 
altogether the reins of our appetites in disgust and 
despair. 

There is reason to believe that the larger part of Pro- 
testant asceticism is a deduction from the fundamental 
false postulate that the normal condition of " fallen 
humanity" is disease. Starting with this fallacy, it 
follows inevitably that self-culture must be a system 

"Because to him who thinketh it sin to him it is sin." He takes a 
lawful as if it were an unlawful gratification, and in doing so relin- 
quishes all the restraints of conscience and piety. 



270 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATION-, 



not of hygienics, but of therapeutics. Mail must not 
hope anything from a diet which will nourish his 
health: he must seek a medicine which will cure dis- 
ease. The result of this mistake is patent, Like those 
unhappy hypochondriacs so numerous among the indo- 
lent and idle, the ascetic is for ever doctoring himself 
with some quack remedy, from which he anticipates pre- 
ternatural restoration. He cannot administer to himself 
the true medicine of suffering, for the Great Physician 
alone knows how to prepare that aright, and His hand 
alone can offer it to his lips at the moment when it will 
benefit him. But in the stead of this, the patient tries 
his own bitter drug, believing, as the clown does, that 
its efficacy must be in the ratio of its nauseousness. 
The blessed sunlight of innocent joy, the health-giving 
exercise of beneficence, he will not use. He heats him- 
self with the fervours of an excited imagination, and 
shuts himself up in his soul's chamber to breathe again 
and again his own sickly self-reflections. Standing 
continually with his finger on the pulse of his own 
religions or moral emotions, and noting and exaggerat- 
ing every symptom of natural weakness, he works him- 
self finally into the state of a confirmed valetudinarian. 

But all this is gross, miserable delusion. Human 
souls are not all diseased, let the churches say what 
they will. The true Self of man has but one disease, 
and that is lethargy. TThen the righteous Will 
sleeps, and the lower nature gravitates unchecked to all 
its blind desires, then, indeed, the soul hath deadly 



REPENTANCE. 



271 



trance. But when the Will is awake and struggling, 
when the man desires, and desires above all earthly 
things (for that is the test of wakefulness), to obey 
Grod's law, then it is fanaticism to call his state disease. 
He may be weak, miserably, shamefully weak, weak as 
an infant, when he ought to have gained long ago the 
strength of manhood. This is the case of the great 
majority of us; but it is a very different thing from the 
dread slumber of the soul. It differs in degree, indeed, 
but not in kind, from that Virtue which is our health- 
ful state. "We cannot be Holy any more than we can 
be Infinite. Some weakness must for ever belong to the 
finite will of every created being. It is, then, the 
strengthening of those weak wills we must seek in all 
our moral struggles, not the healing of a disease, which 
has but one type — a type which has disappeared from 
the moment the true struggle has commenced, and 
consequently before any ascetic remedy would be 
adopted. Now, strength is attainable by diet, not 
medicine. He, therefore, who desires to gain it will 
ask only this, What is the "food convenient for him," 
the habit of life most fitted to promote his moral health, 
the " daily bread" appointed for him by his God ? To 
these questions he will, indeed, study anxiously to find 
the answer. He will " seek till he find them," the 
modes of living which will best enable him to meet all 
his duties ; how and when he can best worship Grod ; 
how and when he can enlarge and cultivate his mind, 
conquer his bad feelings, and cherish good ones ; what 



272 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



food, and sleep, and exercise, best serve to keep his 
limbs and brain and animal spirits fit for their work ; 
what services he can possibly do to his fellow-creatures, 
and how most effectually can he render them. In a 
larger way he will seek out what is the best and noblest 
work of life to which his powers of mind, body, or 
estate permit him to devote himself, and how he ought 
to accommodate the claims of all other duties with this 
chosen task. Suppose a man to seek out diligently the 
true reply to these questions, and to act thereon con- 
sistently, taking each answer, as it will be, in fact, the 
application of the Eternal Law to his own particular 
case — will not that man's moral strength be likely to 
grow and flourish in more and more perfect health ? In 
such a life of absolute self-sacrifice, can there be want 
of any supererogatory self-denial? 

Let it not be imagined that in thus condemning 
Asceticism, the Intuitionalist can in any way be under- 
stood to advocate that narrow measurement and balanc- 
ing of pleasure and duty which would scrutinize, in 
every petty case, lest we should ever relinquish an inch 
more of gratification than the law absolutely required. 
Such a state of things, such greediness for happiness 
and grudging abnegation of it, is the remotest in the 
world from the true " hunger and thirst after righteous- 
ness." As I have often insisted, it is only when we 
seek the very best line of conduct that the lamp of con- 
science shines down the one sole " strait and narrow 
way " of right. Not by any sordid stipulations between 



REPENTANCE. 



273 



happiness and virtue can we fulfil the law which bids 
us be perfect even as our Father in heaven is perfect ; 
but if we do honestly seek and follow, so far as human 
frailty permits, whatsoever things God's law sets before 
us as best, noblest, purest, and most divine, then we 
are in our right course ; and if it please our land and 
loving God to shower His mercies on our heads like 
sunbeams, we may look up to the Sun with unhooded 
eyes, and say, with no qualm of wounded conscience, 
" Father, we take with grateful hearts what Thy love 
has seen fit to bestow/ 9 

How are we practically thus to obey the highest 
law? 

The best way to overthrow intellectual error, of any 
sort, is by no means the common one of meeting it on 
its own ground and fighting on the same level. Nine 
times in ten a false doctrine is a deduction from some 
mistake higher up in our philosophy, some fallacious 
"major " assumed by ignorance, some fundamental false 
postulate accepted by heedlessness. To meet these 
aright we must go backward to the origin of the error. 
"We must rise to higher stand-points, whence, with 
wider vision, we shall perceive the whole source and 
current of the mistake. Not only in special arguments, 
but in all our search for truth, this principle holds good. 
Let us but obtain for ourselves, or give to another, large 
and sound doctrines concerning the duties and destinies 
of man and the character and designs of God, and 
instantly, before we have time to attack them, whole 

n 3 



27i 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



hosts of spectral delusions vanish, of themselves. It is 
not that we have exorcised them one by one, but that 
they cannot live in that daylight into which we have 
passed. They are not compatible with our present faith ; 
and in proportion to the logical completeness of our 
mental systems is the certainty and rapidity of their 
disappearance. Precisely similar is the rule by which 
moral conquests are regulated. To rise above our errors 
is the surest and most perfect method of overthrowing 
them. To pass into the sunlight of pure aspirations, 
and warm religious affections, is to leave behind us all 
the goblin shapes of sin's " valley of the shadow of 
death." Of course we are bound, at all cost, to conquer 
our bad propensities. If we cannot do it by the higher 
way, we must lose no moment in fighting them hand to 
hand and foot to foot. Yet I believe that, in nearly 
every ease, both methods are open to us, and the highest 
the easiest attainable. Are we inclined, for instance, 
to the vices of resentment, intemperance, indolence ? 
we may go on, day after day, on their very level, strug- 
gling fervently, perhaps, to forgive each particular 
injury, to deny ourselves each sinful indulgence, to 
force ourselves to one distasteful employment after 
another ; or, on the other plan, we may strive to trans- 
mute the base metal of our selfish affections into such 
pure gold of divine benevolence as shall be incapable of 
feeling the injuries which hurt us so deeply : we 
may substitute exalted and holy pleasures for the 
vile ones of intemperance ; we may adopt aims so 



REPEXTAXCE. 



275 



noble, that all our indolence will vanish in the 
spontaneous eagerness of our pursuit. By the first 
method we gain, indeed, at last, the strength which 
comes by exertion, and of course it must have a part in 
all virtue's labours. But by the second we fulfil two 
purposes at the same time. The vice is subdued and 
the antithetic virtue substituted at once in its 
room.* 

Surely if we were to think often of the sublime 
grandeur of our true position, it would not be hard 
thus to rise above the pitiful temptations under which 
we now sink so often. Moral Freedom, our God-like 
birthright, what words may tell the solemnity of that 
power which we hold to keep or to break the law 
which sways throughout all space and time, the law 
which has its throne in the will of Deity ! Prayer, 
the key of God's presence-chamber, how can we ever 
measure the nature of that sonship's privilege, by which 
we enter, even whensoever we will, into the sight, the 
communion of the Lord of all ! Immortal virtue, the 
destiny which awaits every soul amongst us, what vision 
can our creeping souls frame here and now, of the 
heaven-wide glory of the endless years, each one of 
which shall bring us nearer and nearer still to God ! 

* Be more intent on the accomplishment of some great good, worthy 
and adequate to fill your affections, than over anxious to shun the 
smaller errors. . . . Ardour for right inspires greatness and eleva- 
tion of soul. Simple fearfulness of wrong contracts the vision and para- 
lyses the will." — Christian Aspects, J. J. Tayler, p. 266. 



276 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



Surely if we think often of these things, if on these 
mountain tops of thought, like the Guebre, we daily 
ascend and worship, we shall conquer at last, we shall 
learn to look down on our little trials as a man regards 
the tasks and disappointments of a child.* Solemn and 
high thoughts are not all, but they are much. There is 
no home so homely, but if we can but bring God therein 
it becomes a Fane. When we think of His purity, all 
our unholy desires flee rebuked into their dens ; when 
we remember His love, light and joy stream into the 
darkest prison-house of the soul. But can we realize 
these attributes while we are indulging in sin ? Not so. 
It is the "pure in heart " only who see God's purity; 
only the loving soul wherein God's love can be reflected. 
Here is an endless interworking of cause and effect. 
The fulfilment of duty permits us to rise to the con- 
templation of holy truths, and this contemplation helps 
the fulfilment of duty. Works nourish faith, and faith 
generates works. 

The ethical discipline, then, proper to a true system 
of practical morals, is this : Rejecting all supererogatory 
and fanciful self-mortifications, we should strain ever 
towards a higher and higher obedience to God's eternal 
law. We should know no grudging, no niggardliness 
of pleasures to be sacrificed or pains to be suffered, but 

* ' ' Let every Brahman with, fixed attention consider all nature, both 
visible and invisible, as existing in the Divine Spirit ; for when he 
contemplates the boundless universe existing in the Divine Spirit, he 
cannot give his heart to iniquity." — Institutes of Menu, b. xii. 118. 



REPENTANCE . 



277 



always have the question on our lips, " How much can 
I do P" never " How little need I do ? " 

Thus Virtue, springing up in genuine love and reve- 
rence for duty, will, in the first place, be cheerful, 
alert, full of readiness to answer every call. The 
alacrity with which duty is obeyed is of infinite impor- 
tance. jSTot only is it true in Social matters that " bis 
dat qui cito dat," but also that " the procrastination of 
a good action is a sin." * The present alone is ours, in 
which God has given us the power to do the justice or 
the kindness. He says to each of us ;— 

11 Tu n'as qu'un jour pour etre juste, 
J'ai 1'eternite (levant moi, " t 

In that one day we must do whatsoever we may of 
right and good, promptly and thankfully. iSTot to us 
belongs the future. It is no sort of excuse that we have 
not done to-day's duty because we purpose to perform it 
to-morrow. Who has guaranteed us a to-morrow ; nav, 
or another hour of life, strength, sight, leisure, wealth, 
or whatsoever else we needed to accomplish this duty ? 
And to Personal Virtue the whole spirit of quick obe- 
dience to conscience is of incalculable value. That 
" girding of the loins," that " feeling the reins in the 
mouth," which can only come when we cast off vigor- 
ously our slip-shod habits of procrastination, and force 



* Zend A vesta. 



f Lamartine, Jocelyn. 



278 



HELIGIOTJS OBLIGATIONS. 



ourselves to do at the moment whatever at the moment 
appears a duty ; that is the health and hardihood of 
the soul. There is scarcely a better motto for life's 
guidance than the brave old exhortation, " What- 
soever thine hand findeth to do, do it with all thy 
might ! " 

And Virtue will be humble ; looking up ever beyond 
present attainment, standing abashed before its own 
ideal of the dignity rightly belonging to a moral being, 
it will gain a lowliness deeper still when it kneels in 
daily adoration before that Divine Perfection towards 
which it will struggle onward through the mire and 
clay, through the storm and cloud for ever. 

And further, it will be simple, free from that corrod- 
ing self- consciousness which ever tarnishes the virtue of 
the ascetic. " The eye which often turns inward is 
never long or steadfastly fixed on any more elevated 
object.* But he who looks always upward adoringly 
to Grod's perfection, always forward eagerly along the 
path of duty, will gain a healthiness of soul such as 
distinctly marks the practical philanthropist from the 
solitary devotee. He will be saved from the sickly 
recoil of the spirit, which is always falling back on its 
own weakness, always trying self- invented remedies 
for its diseases, and employing itself in noting the 
symptoms of their action. Have we not all felt how 
fresh and bracing has proved the open atmosphere of 
real moral work when we have been mercifully forced 
* Sir J. Stephen's Essays in Eccles. Biog., vol. i. p. 316. 



REPENTANCE. 



279 



to try it, and driven out of the close chambers of our 
own thoughts and self- scrutinies ? When it happens 
to us to slip in our pilgrim road, we shall not stand 
ever afterwards examining and lamenting oyer the spot, 
but rise up with burning cheek and heart, more eager 
than before to press onward and redeem our lapse.* As 
old Confucius taught, " If thou chancest to fall, be not 
discouraged. Remember that thou mayest rise again, 
and that it is in thy power to break the bands which 
join thee to thine iniquity, and to subdue the obstacles 
which hinder thee from walking in the paths of 
virtue." f 

Cheerful, Alert, Humble, Simple, such is the true 
life of Virtue. 

Is there yet any space for the discipline of Hope or 
Fear. I shall not repeat here what I have said in the 
first part of this Essay, concerning the philosophic 
fallacy and moral heresy of making the happiness of 
heaven or torment of hell the motives of virtue. But 
there is a sense in which hope and fear may and ought 
to influence us. Had we no hope that our self-conquests 

* St. Pacian advises differently: — "To weep, namely, in sight of the 
church ... to fall prostrate ; to refuse luxury if one invite to the 
bath ; to hold the poor man by the hand ; to fall down before the 
priests; to ask the entreaties of the interceding church. " — Parceneszs, 
S. Pacian. 

Such penitence as this, methinks, would hardly have commended 
itself to the intuitions of Marcus Antoninus, 
t Lun-yu f 3rd Canonical Book, iv. 



280 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS* 



would become more complete and secure as we practised 
them, did we never expect to be more pure, pious, 
loving than we are, it must be owned that virtue would 
be a hard task- mistress, and that Personal Duty would 
be a most forlorn labour. We may, on the contrary, 
" bless God and take courage " when we recognise that 
law of progress which makes each effort facilitate the 
following steps in an ever-increasing ratio. That this 
progress is not to be brought to a termination at death, 
but proceed for an actually endless duration, till it be 
carried into heights of pefection beyond our present 
comprehension, this is surely a Hope which may well 
invigorate our fainting spirits, and give to virtue itself 
the only added grandeur of which it is susceptible, 
namely, durability. And Fear, too, is not without 
place. There are some awful truths revealed to us by 
experience concerning the laws which punish sin. The 
hardening of heart, the loss of faith in truth, in purity, 
in Divine or human goodness — the clouding over of 
all vision of God, who seems to recede away, and, as it 
were, evaporate in a mere impersonal Power — the 
dumbness of soul which cannot even pray for delivery 
from the nightmare horrors of the gulf into which it is 
sinking — these things are fears ; ay, fears, which 
make him who knows them cling by God's feet 
even in agony of supplication. "Who knows how 
profound, how vast that gulf of despair may be ? 
Who knows when we may emerge ? When we have 
fallen therein, we shall see no star of hope above. 



REPENTANCE, 



281 



The grave may not give us back the faith, we have 
forfeited. 

God keep us from that real hell ! Any grief, any 
shame, any suffering, only save us from that ! 

We call these anticipations hopes : these awful terrors 
fears ; but are they not properly so, else could they not 
be admitted to weigh in the choice of virtue. They are 
nothing beyond the choice itself, but only the assurance 
of its endless durability. It is the Right itself we are 
contemplating and choosing in its relation to our own 
souls and to eternity. It is the Wrong in its own 
natural development, and not in any adventitious 
results, which we behold and shun. 



282 



"RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



SECTION Y. 

FAITH. 

The Duty of Faith, is perhaps the one of all others 
which in modern times has been most frequently mis- 
understood, I shall not now pause to expose the vulgar 
fallacy of confounding faith with that intellectual process, 
that " conjunction of ideas," which constitutes belief in 
an historical fact. The application of the terms belong- 
ing to moral distinctions to an act so purely mental, 
reveals an obtusenesss to the nature of morality itself, 
which suffices to place the speaker beyond the pale of 
argument. Happily, so strong a reaction is taking place 
even in the bosom of the Protestant churches against 
this absurd error, that it may be hoped it will ere long 
be exploded. The kernel of truth, of which it appears 
to be the utterly worthless shell,* is doubtless this : — 
That the acceptance with heart and head of the doctrine 
of the " Goodness of Gtod " (set forth in the teaching 
and life of Christ, or in any other way) is the salvation 
of the soul. And why ? Because not till we believe in 
such goodness is it possible for us to fulfil the funda- 
mental canon of religious duty, and love Him with heart, 
soul, and strength. JNb real religion begins till such love 

* National Review, Iso. 1. 



FAITH, 



283 



buds within us, nor can we love God at all till we 
recognise the lovely attributes in Him. Heathenisms 
in general, and the more debased forms of Christianity, 
displayed these so little, and natural religion has for 
ages been so imperfectly developed on the side of true 
piety, that it is no marvel that men should have from 
first to last centred the question of faith in God's 
goodness on the point of belief in the Divine Truth of 
him who spake the parable of the Prodigal, and made 
love "the first and great commandment." Whatever 
other errors came to be blended with this thought, 
however much the martyrdom which crowned that 
Prophet of God's love was misconstrued into an atoning 
sacrifice, to propitiate the wrath of that very God whose 
boundless forgiveness it had been Christ's whole mission 
to proclaim — still, all these paradoxical delusions must 
have found the support which has given them life so 
long, in the one truth which underlies them — Man is 
saved by faith in that Divine Goodness which Jesus 
taught. Of course, at that stage of the philosophical 
progress of humanity, in which we are enabled to 
examine and establish for ourselves the grounds of the 
great truths discovered by the intuitions of the past 
inspired souls, who "forerun the ages " in their spiritual 
might, we cease to use the names of our teachers in 
the same sense in which their earlier disciples used 
them. Purifying the creed of Nazareth from all accre- 
tions of error, we might indeed still ask of a man, 
" Does he believe in Christ ? " as a question equivalent 



284 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS* 



to " Does lie believe in that goodness of God which 
Christ preached?" In a similar way we might ask a 
man, " Does he believe in Euclid ? " meaning, " Does he 
believe in the propositions of geometry?" Such a 
multitude of mistakes, however, have congregated 
about the person and office of Jesus, that it is infinitely 
wiser once for all to abandon the attempt of putting the 
new wine of modern thought into the " bottles" of old 
formulae, and pay to the holy Prophet of Galilee that 
tribute he himself would have chosen : the reverence 
which refuses to use his name to add confusion to the 
religious difficulties of mankind.* Christ meant himself 

* ■ 'Do not think that you can by any logical alchemy distil astral 
spirits from old churches. What the light of your mind, which is the 
direct inspiration of the Almighty, pronounces incredible, that in 
God's name leave uncr edited — at your peril do not try believing that. 
!N"o subtlest hocus-pocus of 'reason' versus 'understanding' will do 
that." — Carlyle's Life of Sterling, p. 78. 

I have no doubt that the great reason why men cling so pertina- 
ciously to the personal authority of the founders of their religions, and 
in general to the whole idea of a traditional revelation, is this, that it 
seems to afford a securer basis for their faith in the realities of a 
spiritual world, the existence of a God, and the immortality of the 
soul. The sensational philosophy appeals with greatest force to minds 
in which the higher powers are comparatively dormant, and whose 
real creed finds utterance in their favourite apophthegm, "Seeing is 
believing." To such persons the belief that God has been beheld by 
elders and prophets, heard by patriarchs and apostles, and finally 
touched in the person of the Incarnate Logos, is full of assurance. The 
story of a single external miracle, narrated no one knows by whom, or 
when or where, copied and recopied through a thousand hands, is of 
more value as evidence than any internal conviction their own souls 



FAITH. 



285 



to be the open door to the Father's sheepfold. For 
how many ages have men knelt before the closed one, 

possess. As Oersted says, they have "the true infidelity, the tendency 
to reject all those immediate truths which do not proceed from the 
impressions of the senses, and to found the entire faith on these and on 
the decisions of the logical understanding." Perhaps none of us are 
wholly free from this error. The belief that an intercourse closer than 
the present once subsisted between God and man is full of charm, and 
as hard to banish as the hope that some material sight or sound may 
hereafter "show us the Father" otherwise than "in spirit." Two 
very important considerations may, however, be urged in proof that 
this tendency to cling to a traditional revelation as the support of 
faith is a weakness of our immature condition which higher progress 
will entirely remove. Both intellectually and morally, the advancing 
path of the individual and of the race diverges from traditionalism. 
The childish readiness to trust in testimony dwindles with every fresh 
experience of the imperfections of human memory, and of the in- 
accuracy of human language even where the honesty of the witness 
may chance to be established to our satisfaction, and his education and 
intelligence render him capable of translating his impressions into the 
most suitable words. The mythical theory, in revealing to us a law of 
mind so fatal to the testimony of witnesses excited by strong feelings 
and not submitted to cross-examination — this alone has thrown on 
history a cloud which can never henceforth be removed. We shall 
always understand in future that when any event is presented to us we 
only behold it through the mist of the historian's mind. The expe- 
rience of every observant person will supply instances wherein friends 
of whose good faith he can entertain no doubt, nay, even his own 
memory, have grievously deceived and misled him. Thus our con- 
fidence in the veracity of history (in such accurate veracity as is indis- 
pensable to form a basis for a religion) is continually diminishing, even 
putting aside the special difficulties starting up afresh at every step in 
physical science concerning the miraculous facts recorded. The value 
of Testimony as such tends to shrink ever more and more. 



286 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



and permitted him to hide that Father from their 
love ?* 

Faith, then, simply the " faith which worketh by 
love" (from which love springs, and in which it lives), 
is this — a living trust in the goodness of God. 
Analysing this trust, we discover that it contains 
several elements. Three of these may be considered 
as theoretic and intellectual chiefly : the fourth alone 
is practical, and decides the application of the rest. 

First, such Trust supposes a theoretic belief in the 
eternal and immutable nature of goodness itself, then 
in the existence of God, then in the impersonation of 
that goodness in the Divine character. 

It would seem, at first sight, that these fundamental 
articles of religion require not to be insisted on to any 

On the other hand, the moral progress of man tends no less decidedly 
to raise the value of his inward Intuitions. The uncertainty and hesi- 
tation which a novice in virtue feels concerning the reality of righte- 
ousness, make room for firmest confidence in the soul which has proved 
its loyalty in self-conflict. And the belief in an all-righteous God is, 
as I have so often insisted, only this faith in Eighteousness at a certain 
height — the height wherein the Will, fully exerted, becomes conscious 
of the Holy Will above it. The more we know, the less we shall believe 
in a traditional miraculous revelation. The better we are, the less we 
shall need to believe in one. 

* Vide the extraordinary facts collected in Didron's Christian 
Iconography, showing how the mediaeval artists (our best witnesses of 
the real feelings of Christendom) subordinated the Father entirely to 
the Son : and even when they depicted Him, gave Him a dishonourable 
position, and a garb ridiculous, hateful, or cruel. — Didron, p. 185, 
et seq. 



FAITH. 



287 



professed believer in God. I conceive, on the contrary, 
that there are but few who can truly be said to believe 
them at all, and that their acceptance will create an era 
in the life of every soul which actually receives them. 
In the first place, that idea of goodness itself — how little 
do we grasp it ! We love it, indeed, but so blindly, so 
doubtfully, that not one in ten of us knows what it is 
that we love, or holds any faith in its unchanging 
reality. It is an immense step for any man to make, 
to arrive at the conclusion : " There are certain actions 
and sentiments / love and revere, and must always love 
and revere. They are what I call " good." 

" Die Tugend sie ist kein leerer Schall, 
Der Mensch kann sie uben im Leben." * 

From this point there is but one step more to the 
grand resolution of morality : "I will do and feel those 
actions and sentiments I recognise as good. Once our 
consciousness of moral verities becomes clear, the day- 
light enters, and we can lie dreaming no more. 

The existence of God is a dogma of weight precisely 
proportionate to the strength with which we grasp it. 
Whenever it happens to us to come against some dis- 
tinct proof (or what we feel to be a proof) of the actual 
Being of a God — say that we perceive in the geometry 
of an insect's cell the wisdom of 

" The great Geometer who made the Bee " — 

say that we behold in the unnumbered suns of heaven 

* Schiller. Die Worte des Glaiwens. 



288 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



the architecture of omnipotence — say that we feel in 
the silent depths of our hearts the breathless awe of 
recognising an answered prayer — it is the same won- 
drous thought, ever new, ever unfathomable, like the 
thought of death: " there is indeed a Grod!" Doubt- 
less to thousands the mere assent to the dogma of a 
Deity never through life becomes thus tangible. It is 
not only that they have not what I shall presently show 
to be the practical element in all true faith, a permanent 
and living sense of Divine realities, but that they have 
never once actually grasped even the intellectual theory 
itself. 

Lastly, there is the belief in the impersonation of 
immutable goodness in the Divine character. And this 
tenet, so far from being universally recognised, is 
implicitly contradicted by the intellectual creed of the 
greater part of the Churches of the world. It is true 
that the most pompous epithets of moral eulogium are 
applied to God in their formularies, but these are ren- 
dered utterly nugatory by descriptions of His dealings, 
the very reverse of those to which such epithets are 
legitimately applied. 

What can a mere word, such as "good" or "mer- 
ciful," avail against full-length pictures of evil and 
cruelty ? TTe all know what is the consequence to 
our minds when a term of respect is officially applied 
to a person whose conduct belies it. TTe do not 
alter our opinion of the person, but we cease to attach 
weight to the title. "His Sacred Majesty" inspires 



FAITH. 



289 



us with no reverence for Charles II. TTe do not 
expect the Emperor of China to be heavenly-minded, 
though styling himself " Celestial." On the contrary, 
such terms as "Majesty," " Grace," "Holiness," 
" Serene Highness/' and the like, have lost all power 
by their frequent misapplication, and we unconsciously 
treat them as of no account. Precisely in like manner 
do the epithets applied to God lose meaning, whenever 
the soid has been so far misled as to accept mainly the 
representation given of Him by the churches, instead of 
that offered by its own intuitions. The very word 
" good " itself is unconsciously understood in quite a 
different sense when applied to God. Not in a greater, 
nobler, wider sense, Heaven knows ! but in one so 
narrow, and yet so vague, that it woidd often be hard 
to say if it convey any impression whatever. If we 
hear of the "majesty" of some private person's charac- 
ter, we conclude that we shall find in him dignity of 
demeanour and grandeur of soul. If we hear of the 
" King's Majesty," nothing hinders us picturing as 
much meanness and vice as kings have commonly dis- 
played. Thus, when we are told that a man is pre- 
eminently " good, kind, merciful," we understand that 
he has that character our hearts spontaneously love. 
But when we are told that God is all this, how dead, 
how meaningless, do the words fall on our ear ! What 
feelings, indeed, can they call forth when we are told 
that the " goodness " does not exclude the creation of 
millions for eternal woe, nor the "mercifulness" the 

o 



290 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



complacent contemplation of Hell ? * To find, then, 
that the Divine character personifies our idea of good- 
ness, that goodness we love in a good man, is a dis- 
covery past all price in value to the soul. It is, in 
fact, the point at which a genuine religion of love 
must begin. 

The Practical element in faith is that permanent and 
living sense of these three theoretic truths which raises 
the conviction of the mind into the trust of the heart. 
This is the factor which alone can give actual value to 
the former figures, and it has been far too little recog- 
nised as the point of highest importance. Men are for 
ever preaching, Believe this, Believe that. Churches 
require their members to repeat perpetually their creeds, 
proving that theology is the only science "in which we 
require to be reminded what we believe. "f But this 
everlasting presentation of a dead creed leads to no 
result, any more than all the evidences and demon- 
strations with which it is girded. It remains still 
only a dead block, a beam of dry timber, though never 
so well squared and polished. There is no need to 
marvel it puts forth no leaves nor fruit : the sap is 
absent. 

That it is our duty to cultivate this vital part of 

* What did Dante mean by inscribing over the gate of hell, "Fecemi 
la divina potestate eel il primo Amove?" A "love" which consigns 
its victims to " l'eterno dolore " is not precisely what we mean by 
f i love." 

+ Blanco White's Life, vol. iii. 



FAITH. 



faith — nay, that the especial moral work laid on us 
in the matter is the cultivation thereof, and not merely 
the acceptance of theoretic truths, there can be no 
doubt in the mind of any one who accepts the great 
axiom of religious duty. If we are to love God with 
heart, soul, and strength, we must needs acquire not 
only a belief in His existence and goodness, but so 
vivid a consciousness of His presence as may permit 
our hearts to bestow on Him those strong sentiments 
and lively emotions which they are altogether unable 
to send into the remote and vague regions of a merely 
intellectually admitted Deity. God must be believed, 
and God must be felt to be " not far from any one of 
us/' " about our path, and about our bed, and spying 
out all our ways/ 5 if religion is ever to be to us the first 
of affections. If we are to love the Lord our God with 
all our hearts, if we are to make life one long act of 
worship, it is clear that nothing short of the sight of 
the shekinah of His perpetual presence can transform 
the world into a temple wherein our worship of adoring 
thoughts, loving sentiments, and holy actions can pos- 
sibly be paid. 

Herein lies the turning-point of the controversy 
between those who desire thus to consecrate life, and 
those who affirm that such consecration is impossible 
and undesirable. Before proceeding to show (as I shall 
endeavour to do in the next section) that we can and 
ought to give to God the hearts which He has made, it 
is needful first to prove that we can and ought to 



292 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



possess a faith, in Him which can render such, life- 
worship possible. I shall describe this controversy of 
secularism and religion as well as I am able, and 
endeavour, by proving the legitimacy of faith, to lay a 
foundation on which I may next demonstrate the duty 
of self-consecration. 

It has become very common of late to maintain, that 
the limitations of human nature, at this stage of exist- 
ence, are such that it is quite chimerical to represent 
piety as the rightful dominant sentiment of man upon 
earth. We may have, it is said, some reverence, some 
gratitude, some love towards Grod even now ; but the 
interests and affections of this world must occupy the 
foreground of our attention, and it is merely an enthu- 
siasm which would call on us to seek " first the kingdom 
of God and His righteousness 5 ' while still in this low 
stage of being. Doubtless such views as these are the 
result of reaction from that overstrained idea of religion 
put forth by some pietists, namely, that piety ought to 
be not merely the first, but the only sentiment of 
humanity, and that all other interests and affections 
should not simply be subordinated to it, but exist merely 
at its command and for its sake. 

The first error understates humanity too far ; and the 
second does so also, though it might rather, at first 
sight, be thought to overstate it. As Butler so well 
demonstrated, the moral nature of man distinctly 
announces itself as the rightful master, the dominant 
principle de jure in our compound nature. The fitness 



FAITH* 



293 



of the " supremacy of conscience " is one of the clearest 
facts of our internal consciousness, Those moral senti- 
ments, with which the religious are indissolubly united, 
cannot, by any violence, be self-pictured as occupying 
their proper place when thrust from the throne of our 
souls and jostled amid the crowd of our passions, inte- 
rests, and desires. But, on the other side, though the 
head be superior to the hand or foot, those limbs have 
their own fit place and beauty in the human form. To 
argue that all our natural affections, our animal gratifi- 
cations, our thirst for knowledge, our delight in the^ 
beautiful, are to be suffered to exist only for religion's 
sake, this is surely a great mistake. To say that we 
are bound to desire knowledge only because God wills 
that we enlarge our souls, and that we are bound to 
love our dearest friends only for God's sake, is 
equivalent to saying that the Divine law is not only 
to rule our lower natures, but to kill them ; that we 
are not to rise upon the pedestal of our humanity, but 
to be suspended in air by cutting it away from under 
our feet. 

Happily such suicidal acts as these are not wholly 
within the scope of human freedom ; nevertheless the 
effort to perform them is itself injurious. Let us 
understand clearly that no feeling or desire which in 
the remotest degree interferes with religion and 
morality is to be permitted to ourselves, and that 
every feeling and desire which they command is to be 
entertained with all our strength. But beyond these 



291 



RELIGIOtS OBLIGATIONS. 



lie whole tracts of our nature which may most 
righteously be cultivated. We must indeed desire 
knowledge because it is right to enlarge our souls ; but 
we may also love it for its own glorious sake and sinless 
delights, without thinking ourselves any way deficient 
if, at any time, we cannot say we have taken up our 
book solely to enlarge our souls in obedience to God, 
We must feel benevolence towards our fellow- creatures 
because it is our duty to do so ; but we may also cherish 
some of them for their own attractions, without think- 
iiig ourselves less religious because we do not embrace 
our friend or child only for God's sake and by His 
command, In the case of human love, where the 
object is really virtuous, there is indeed a fresh ab- 
surdity involved in the doctrine that we are to love 
the creature only for the sake of the Creator, be- 
cause the reason ivhy we love God Himself is pri- 
marily His moral perfection, and each degree of 
virtue which we recognise in a human being has its 
own independent right (morally considered) to our 
reverence and regard. 

There is, of course, very little danger to be appre- 
hended on this side from the false statement of the 
claims of religion. For one who will dream of absorb- 
ing all humanity in piety, there will be thousands who 
will fall into the greater error of sinking religion to the 
level of the lower sentiments. 

To return, then, to the opposite doctrine, which 
asserts that the love of God must needs occupy an 



FAITH, 



295 



obscure position in the life of man while on earth, 
When we demand on what grounds may be thus con- 
tradicted our instinctive ascription of supremacy to the 
religious and moral parts of our nature, we are 
answered, that it is because we cannot* unless in an 
abnormal condition of mind, feel the same interest for 
the invisible as for the visible world ; that we must 
care more for houses and lands, and wives and children, 
and shops and railways, and wars and stocks, than for 
the relation of our souls to an unseen, unfelt, unheard 
existence, Now this view of human nature, if good for 
anything, ought to be pushed some steps further. It 
assumes (if I understand it rightly) that what we feel 
through the bodily senses must be more real and more 
dear to us than anything else. But if this be so, how 
comes it that men ever care for such invisible, intangi- 
ble things as fame, or esteem, or love ? Is it the sight 
of a printed paper, or the sound of an expression of 
respect, or the touch of a warm hand, which make men 
strive either for the " bubble reputation" or for the 
dearest and purest of all earth's joys? Let any man 
try to analyze his own desire to be beloved, and ask 
himself what he wants from his friend. He will find 
that it is something which, indeed, his senses reveal to 
him at moments, but which is in no way the object of 
those senses. Human love is nearly entirely a matter 
of faith. TTe may see and feel certain parcels of matter, 
and call the sum of them " William/ 5 or " James," and 
we may see certain motions of a face which convey to 



206 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS* 



us the feeling we experience when we smile, and hear 
words which express, by a most subtle process, our 
affections ; but are we (rational inductive philosophers) 
to jump at the conclusion that that phenomenon before 
us named William is really like ourselves ; that the 
smile on its face and the sounds it utters really signify 
a love like our own ? And, if it be granted that 
that phenomenon loves us, are we to care for that in- 
visible love otherwise than as it may induce the pheno- 
menon in question to give us something to eat or to 
wear, or to sing to us pleasantly, or gratify our senses 
in some way or other ? What can it matter to me what 
are the hypothetical feelings of a hypothetical soul, 
except so far as they can become tangible, or visible, or 
audible ? What can I care for the love of the phenome- 
non " William," who gives me nothing but love ? The 
phenomenon " James " does not love me, but gives me 
a dinner once a year. His death ought, in all 
philosophy, to afflict me ; while that of William should 
not touch me at all. 

Who can really reason like this ? Who is there that 
does not acknowledge, by his whole life's labour and 
longing, and by the endless, unheeded sacrifices of his 
sensual gratifications, that there are things in which he 
feels a deeper interest than in aught the material 
world can produce ? 

Human . love is, in very truth, no more a thing of 
sense than Divine love. We perceive, indeed, an object 
before us ; but intuitions, various and mysterious, can 



FAITH. 



297 



alone inspire us with the conviction that that object 
possesses that unseen soul which alone we can love, and 
can help us, from the few poor fragmentary hints of 
looks and words, to realize the moral qualities which we 
fearlessly attribute to our friend. We believe in the 
invisible soul, and in its qualities, and instantly there 
springs forth one of the strongest sentiments of our 
hearts, a love which not only does not want any material 
gift, but is ready to sacrifice those it possesses for this 
object's pleasure. Again, a few more mysterious signs, 
and intuition tells us we are beloved in turn by that 
soul, and instantly a throb of joy runs through cur 
being, And wherefore ? Is it because we shall get 
anything to see, or feel, or hear, or taste, or smell ? 
Who thinks so ? 

Our affections being thus altogether dependent on 
intuitions, and disinterested as regards the senses, it is 
manifestly idle for any man who loves his friend to 
urge the immateriality of God as the reason why he 
cannot love Him. It is the unseen, unfelt, unheard, 
immaterial thing which he loves in his friend ; not his 
face, or hand, or voice, except as that thing's exponents. 
He must shift his ground, then, as regards religion, and 
say that his reason for not loving God equally with 
his friend is, because he is not equally sure that God 
exists, or has the moral qualities he loves in his friend. 
The argument, then, reduces itself to this — that, if we 
can have equal faith in God as in our friend, we are 
logically called upon to feel the same interest in His 

o 3 



298 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



love as we should do in that of a human being who was 
equally lovable and venerable. 

It is needless to repeat what has been said so often 
concerning the doubts to which are exposed all external 
existences. It seems to me, however, that a clear 
comprehension of these would often be of great service 
in removing the cruder and shallower forms of religious 
scepticism. Deprived of the hand of the five senses to 
which he clung so confidently, man finds that he must 
walk alone ; that his own consciousness is all that he can 
fall back upon in the last resort ; and that the existence 
of a material universe around him, of a love-receiving 
and love-returning soul in his wife, mother, friend, and 
of an infinite, all-adorable Gfod above him, are all truths 
which may indeed be doubted, but which he will, if he 
be wise, believe, and cling to, and act upon, and live 
and die in the great trust of their reality. Nevertheless, 
it is both unjust and useless to pretend that doubt does 
not attach itself most readily and tenaciously to that 
truth of the three just named which, from the nature of 
the case, derives no verification from the bodily senses. 
AVe do not, primarily, believe in our friend's soul 
because we have seen or heard it ; but yet our eyes and 
ears bring continually corroborative testimony (not 
demonstrative, but still corroborative) to its existence. 
This support we cannot obtain for our consciousness of 
the Being who is purely spiritual; and the result is 
patent, that when we are much occupied by material 
interests our faith grows weak, and when we are 



FAITH, 



299 



engrossed by tliem it sinks into abeyance, Xow I do 
not believe that any one actually wishes to kill his own 
consciousness of God, He may wish to disbelieve in the 
unjust and cruel potentate whom false creeds have 
pictured on the throne of the universe, and he may 
have had his natural consciousness so warped and 
entangled with these errors that he strives to cast off 
true and false religion together. But no man can 
desire to persuade himself that there is not an absolutely 
Good and Powerful Being guarding him and all the 
world, and bringing him with the strength of Omnipo- 
tence to his everlasting welfare. Even a very wicked 
man, I believe, would be glad to find faith in this God. 
He might shudder at the thought of the infinitely pure 
eyes which behold the loathsome iniquity of his heart. 
He might tremble (with the cowardice inseparable from 
a weak will) at the anticipation of the tremendous 
Justice which must work the retribution of his crimes, 
and at the unchanging and (to him) awful Goodness 
which is resolved to correct them. But still, if 
he can but understand that those eyes which behold 
his sin, that rod which will strike him, are those 
of God, of the Being who fulfils all his soul's 
dreams of goodness, he will sooner rush to Him, 
and fling himself wholly into His arms, than seek 
again to hide from that Loving One in the wild waste 
of Atheism. 

What we want to remove is the wish to disbelieve 
our religious consciousness, We want to be first 



800 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



assured tliat it is really a consciousness of a God^ not of 
a devil, or of an imperfect being whom we could not 
really love or reverence, and who would only serve to 
hamper our moral development or fill us with hideous 
fears. Well says Maurice, that it is "by preaching 
that ' the kingdom of heaven is at hand/ and not the 
kingdom of hell, that we are to work upon the hearts 
of men and turn the disobedient to the wisdom of the 
just." 

But if this be gained when we are persuaded that, if 
we can only believe in God, we shall find Him truly 
God, is scepticism at an end ? Alas ! it is not and 
cannot be so. Human faith is an imperfect thing, like 
all other things human. The consciousness of God, 
taking its root and life in the very deepest foundations 
of our nature, is susceptible, almost indefinitely, of being 
crushed down and smothered by the superficial passions 
and interests of life. He who, in his hours of prayer 
and adoration, has felt most sure of the realities of the 
spiritual world must often lament how, in the intervals 
and amid the crowd of jostling cares and pleasures, 
these great realities fade in dim perspective, insomuch 
that, unless he continually renew his vision of them, 
they seem likely to disappear altogether from his hori- 
zon. 1$ot is it only thus regularly in the ratio of our 
attention to them, but in a thousand ways which He 
alone who knows the secrets of hearts can explain, the 
tides of human faith ebb and flow, sometimes slowly and 
evenly, sometimes with earthquake violence and rapidity, 



FAITH. 



301 



leaving us at one moment dry and bare, and the next 
rolling up the mighty flood to a mark higher than it 
had ever reached before. 

These alternations of strength and weakness, clearness 
and obscurity, are doubtless parts of the vast machinery 
prepared by God for the growth, through trial, of our 
moral life* Our duty, as regards them, is very evident, 
There is no question here of human testimony which 
our obligations to truth may compel us to sift and 
balance, and which it is a sin not to question when it 
would affect our religion, Still less is there of oppo- 
sition between a moral evidence in our hearts against a 
creed, and a critical one in its favour which as yet we 
know not how to overthrow ; a contest wherein we 
should be called upon to decide that God must be just 
and good, no matter how many human witnesses 
avouched miracles testifying to the contrary, The 
simple faith in an absolutely Righteous God comes to 
us with claims the reverse of all these. It appeals 
solely to all that is highest, purest, bravest, holiest in 
our inmost souls. It offers itself as that which is to 
subdue every vice, however dear ; to demand every 
virtue, however difficult. We feel that we must be 
better men with this faith, worse men ivithout it ; that 
the more we have of it, the purer, the nobler, and more 
self-sacrificing we shall become. 

Faith in the true God is nothing but Faith in 
goodness at its crystallizing point. When that 
Faith reaches its right degree, the abstract becomes 



302 



JRELIGtOtS OBLIGATION 



personified— matt believes in God. There is no real 
antithesis between faith and works ; for when the will 
is true to good works it generates faith, even as 
faith reacts in added strength upon the will, There 
is here no unnatural task, for the will to force belief in 
facts concerning which moral insight can reveal nothing, 
Its work is not to torture evidence, to suppress one 
band of witnesses and bribe another. It is required 
only to exert itself in its one clear, natural way- — to 
rouse itself to that full self-consciousness it obtains by 
antagonism against the lower desires. In that con- 
sciousness it will find and feel the great Holy "Will of 
the Universe which works above itself.* 

When we become aware that the realities of the 
spiritual world are slipping from our grasp, we ought 
instantly to rouse all our strength thus to renew our 
consciousness of them, Nor need this effort be un- 
aided. We may clasp back those realities with the 
lifted hands of prayer, Grod will give them to us, 
though not always, perhaps, at once. There are many 
mysteries in this part of our nature, and any intellectual 
doubt complicating our difficulties may leave them 

* "I understand thee now, sublime Spirit ! I hare found the organ 
whereby to apprehend this reality. It is Faith, that voluntary acqui- 
escence in the view which is naturally presented to us, because only 
through this view we can fulfil our vocation : this it is which first 
lends a sanction to knowledge, and raises to certainty and conviction 
that which without it might be mere delusion. It is not knowledge, 
but it is a resolution of the wiH to admit the validity of knowledge. "— 
Fichte, Vocation of Man, p. 119= 



FAITH, 



303 



long unsettled. But grim old Giant Despair is 3lain 
from the moment when we learn that an Infinite God 
must be infinitely good. We may be imprisoned for some 
sad days in Doubting Castle, or its cold shade may fall 
across our pilgrim path, but it has no longer a Master 
Fear to bolt us into its dungeons, TV" e can force our 
way forth with the strong will to do it, for there is 
" sunshine," cloudless sunshine for us beyond its walls,* 
Despair lives no more when that light strikes upon 
him. " If there be a God, He is absolutely good. If 
there be a world beyond the grave, it is the good God's 
world"— these are convictions which, once settled in 
the soul, leave Atheism but a little space to work in. 
Sooner or later it must die of inanition, By degrees 
we shall all " grow in faith," feel less and less those 
dim veils of mist rising from the uncultured places of 
the heart and obscuring our vision of the heavenly 
heights, God will then be to us as reo.1 a Being, His 
presence will be as much a fact, as the friend is real 
whose hand we press, and whose presence fills our 
hearts with a joy which no doubt ever dares to mar. 
It is so sometimes to us even now. What a thought it 
is, what hope to brighten life, that it will be so always 

* "For he" (Giant Despair) "sometimes in sunshiny weather fell 
into fits, and lost for a time the use of his hand " {Pilgrim's Progress, 
31st edit., p. 116), What a beautiful thought is this ! Even the grim 
despair of fanaticism must have its "fits," when God's soft, blessed 
sunlight pours (the symbol of His love) upon the heads of the just and 
unjust, 



304 



RELIGlor? OBLIGATION 



at last ! To live in tlie actual sense of G-ocl's ever- 
present love ! How little need would there be of a 
paradise beyond ! * 

To him who asserts that man is incapable, in this 
stage of existence,* of making religion the primary con= 
cern of his life, let the answers now given suffice. If it 
be beyond man's nature here to love Grod above all, it is 
beyond it no less to love his brother better than his own 
ease or pleasure, nay, to care for him in any way save 
as he chances to contribute to his sensual pleasures. 
But if our human nature revolts from such degradation, 
if we do actually " love our brother whom we have 
seen/' then may we with irrefutable logic '''love our 
Ciod whom we have not seen/' And if we love our 
brother better than ourselves, then also may we " love 
the Lord our God above all, and with all our heart, and 
soul, and strength/"'' 

Faith, then, is reasonable. And faith is right If it 
be asked, How can it be a duty to cherish a more vivid 
consciousness than we spontaneously feel of a certain 
external Presence ? the answer is ready. It is a duty to 

* Very early was it recognised that a pure faith was in itself happi- 
ness. The Orphic Hymn of Initiation says, f *' Suffer not thy former 
prejudices to debar thee from the happy life which the knowledge of 
these sublime tmths wiU procure unto thee. Go on in the right way, 
and contemplate the Sole Governor of the world. He is One, of Him- 
self alone ; and to that One aU things owe their being. He operates 
through all, was never seen of mortal eyes, but does Himself see every 
one." — Warburton's Divine Legation, i. 232 ( quotation front Clemens 
Alex, and Eusebius 



FAITH j 



305 



ourselves and to Grod. It is a duty to ourselves^ be- 
cause it is equivalent in all ways to the enforcing on 
ourselves the perpetual sense of moral obligation ; it is 
the same thing as calling up the law itself continually 
before us ; and more even than this, for it is the law 
personified, and possessing all the added influences of 
that Divine personification. It is a duty to God, be- 
cause His benefits and perfections claim of us a homage 
which the whole worship of life cannot adequately pay, 
and which we are therefore bound to offer with all the 
diligence we can command, 

The method of performing this great duty is doubt- 
less one of the problems which has presented itself 
most frequently to religious minds. I have already 
touched on some features of it, and will but venture 
to offer a few suggestions which seem most suitable to 
the case. The actual consciousness of the existence of a 
Holy Will above us is assuredly most frequently pro- 
duced " by the strong exertion of our own righteous 
Will, brought into vivid life by antagonism with the 
lower desires. Thus every possible act of duty, social, 
personal, or religious, possesses a power of increasing 
our consciousness of God, and that power rises in the 
same ratio with the virtue which the performance of 
the duty develops.* 

* Luther held that no act could be virtuous, except performed in 
faith. "To do right with the spirit bent downwards upon the duty 
seemed to him impossible : for the only possible right act in man was 
the turning of the heart to God, and from that flowed, by His decree, 



306 



HELIGIOTTS OBLIGATIONS. 



Many special acts of duty have also their peculiar 
influence. Deeds of forgiveness and loving-kindness to 
our fellow-creatures prepare our hearts most remark- 
ably for the higher spiritual exercises wherein absolute 
communion may be attained. Continual practice of 
truth and purity raises the soul into regions of thought 
and feeling wherein it perceives (rod's presence on all 
sides. Thanksgiving, if ever fully performed, would 
actually recall God to us in every blessing (that is to 
say, in every moment) of our lives. 

In Obedience, then, general and special, to the laws 
of God, lies our hope of increasing and intensifying 
our faith. There is no use shrinking from scepticism, 

all that there was right in any other" {National Rev., i., p. 180). This 
is evidently the doctrine of the XL, XII., and XIII. Articles of the 
Church of England. Theoretically, this dogma excludes the true 
freedom of the Will (which Luther actually did) ; the only tenable 
philosophy of freedom requiring the admission of a righteous Will in 
every rational being, which Will is necessarily self-legislative of every 
duty, and able to compel the obedience of the lower nature. The 
stand-points of theology and philosophy are here too far divided for 
any Colossus to stretch his feet across and stand on both. Practically, 
Luther's dogma tends to detract vastly from the growth of the very 
faith whose value it thus pushes to absurdity. As I have said in the 
text, it is by the practice of duty that faith is nourished. To tell a 
man that he can perform no duty till he has conscious faith in God 
would in thousands of cases be to prevent him from either performing 
the duty or gaining the faith. 

It is strange to find this whole controversy debated in the far-off 
days of the Yedas and the Bhagvat-Gita. The Vedanta Sam con- 
cludes in favour of Faith alone — "Knowledge realizing all things as 
Brahma" (Ward, ii. 179). 



FAITH, 



307 



and trying to keep the whole subject at a distance. 
Let us meet our most fearful doubts bravely, with all 
the weapons our intellectual armoury can afford ; but 
let us also bring to bear on the battle those mighty 
powers of our nature which alone can really achieve 
the final defeat of scepticism, Let us call forth the 
righteous "Will, fighting blow for blow with every base, 
selfish, vain, or sensual desire, till its high-strung and 
quivering nerves recognise beyond mistake the unseen 
Hand which is laid in guidance and in blessing on 
the champion's head. Let us use the all-powerful 
instrument of prayer, and ask of (rod that He give to 
us such influx of His Spirit of Truth as shall for ever 
quell such hesitating fear, and place before us in faith 
His own ever-present Deity.* 

God is near us, He is above us, around us, within 
us ; guiding every small and every great event of our 
lives, and continually speaking to our hearts through, 
conscience. We all believe this, or rather we admit it: 
we do not deny it. And we are also ready to admit 
that, if we actually realized this truth of God's presence, 
we should become holy and happy to a degree of which 
our present blind existence can give but little semblance, 
Is it not strange to think this— that, on the raising our 
cold admission of a truth to a Hying faith in it, depends 

* " Assuredly the Divine clemency suffereth not those who piously 
and humbly seek the truth to wander in the darkness of ignorance, to 
fall into the pits of false opinion and perish in them. For there is no 
worse death than ignorance of truth, " — Johanxes Scores. 



308 



KELlGlOtS OBLIGATIONS. 



our virtue and our ineffable joy 5 and yet that We do not 
perform an act apparently so simple, nay, make so little 
attempt to perform it ? Whenever we do chance to grasp 
a clear sense of spiritual realities we obtain a strength 
which lasts us for days and even years. Oh that God 
may help us to hold it more continually ! that He may 
open our closed eyes to see that Sun which is beaming 
over our heads and pouring floods of holy light upon our 
earthly way ! He will help us, if we but do our own 
part, and " draw to Him as He will draw to us." Hour 
by hour we may do something to increase our faith. 
We may perform every common daily duty, our labour 
of head or hand, our cares for those around us, our self- 
restraints of impatience, or anger, or sensuality — all 
and each as God's direct task, which His eye is over- 
looking all the while, watching both the act itself and 
the spirit with which we do it. We may make every 
trifling pain, vexation, and humiliation, "the meanest 
thong of all that whips us, welcome," and bless it 
as God's justice, God's kindness. We may receive 
every ordinary pleasure, food, walks, studies, and the 
caresses of our beloved ones, all as God's dear gifts, 
tokens of tenderness like the violets a mother strews on 
her child's cradle. "We may look on the whole earth 
as God's world, made beautiful by His artist hand ; on 
science as the unveiling of His wisdom ; on history as 
the tale of His providence. All the happy living things 
which roam over the fields, or people the air and the 
waters, are God's brute creatures, cared for by Him 



FAITH. 



309 



who loves us too. Our brother men, and those dear 
babes who seem to have come so short a way to us from 
heaven — these are God's sons, God's children. We 
cannot bless one of them with the smallest kindness, 
we cannot feel love, or admiration, or sympathy for one 
of them, but we are blessing and loving a child of God. 

Alas ! how easy it ought to be to see in all things, 
serve in all things, love, and worship, and adore in all 
things our ever-present Lord ! It is a question to ask 
our hearts why, if it be so simple a matter, we have 
never attained to that Faith which we acknowledge 
would give us such power of virtue. Do we really 
wish that God should be always present ? Are there no 
words, no feelings, no thoughts, which we desire to 
indulge, and which we are conscious we never could 
indulge if we beheld those pure eyes gazing down day 
and night upon us ? How far is the weakness of our 
Faith the result of the weakness of our Will ? - 



310 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



SECTION VI 

SELF-COXSECBATIOX. 

In the last section I endeavoured to prove that it is not 
an unreasonable thing for a man, even in this stage of 
being, to make the love of God his primary interest, and 
that it is right for him to nourish that faith in God's 
perpetual presence which is the necessary preliminary 
to such (not unreasonable) elevation of Divine Love to 
the chief place in his affections. In these concluding 
pages I shall attempt to prove that it is actually incum- 
bent on every man thus " to seek first the kingdom of 
God and I shall strive to describe the true character 
of a life in which all duties, social, personal, and reli- 
gious, are completed by such sele-conseceatiox, where- 
in, while using every power and every affection of his 
humanity, a man takes also his part in that glorious 
heritage which belongs to the whole of his existence, 
mortal and immortal, and here and now, beyond and 
above all earthly things, seeks, and serves, and loves 
the Lord his God " with all his heart, and soul, and 
strength." 

The proof that it is the duty of man to give to the 
love of God the highest place in his heart need not 
occupy a large field of argument, assuming the reader 



SELF-CONSECRATION. 



311 



to have conceded the previous demonstrations, or. indeed, 
to have admitted at all tlie canon of religious duty. If 
we are bound to love God, the only question to be 
settled is, whether any other person or thing can have 
claims on us for an equal or superior degree of love. 
And this being rejected as absurd, it follows that the 
love of God ought to be not only a great, but the great- 
est of human sentiments . Even as the benefits of God 
are above all mortals' benefits, even as God's moral 
perfection is above all mortal virtue, so in strictest logic 
ought our love for Him to exceed all other love. 

But it must not be supposed that the mode in which 
this love of God is raised to its rightful pre-eminence 
can ever be (as often imagined) by lowering our human 
affections, till piety is left standing highest simply 
because there is not another high one left to rival it. 
This is among the direst of fanaticisms. TTe never love 
our fellow-creatures too much. TTe love them selfishly, 
craving to engross their whole hearts to ourselves — love 
them sensually, seeking from them unlawful gratifica- 
tions — love them immorally, making their smiles the 
goal of our virtue — love them idolatrously, keeping 
down our moral ideal to the level of their defects : but 
never do we truly love them too much. The Selfish- 
ness, the Sensuality, the Immorality, the Idolatry, are 
not Love, but the parasite-plants which dwarf and 
wither love, and which must be cleared away from it to 
restore its vigour and beauty. Of pure, true, tender, 
unselfish love there is never too much in any human 



312 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS 



heart. Nay 3 there is no possibility that any creature in 
the universe will ever feel too strongly that holy senti- 
ment which swells in its uttermost fulness even the 
Infinite Heart of Grocl. MlUenidiims hence, among the 
stars, so far from having outgrown love as if it were a 
part of the weakness of mortality, we shall find it risen 
in our souls to a majestic power, an ineffable beauty, of 
which we can form no vision now. It is more love for 
our fellows that we want, not one shadow of a shade 
the less. 

But what then of the love of Grod ? How are we to 
make that the chief of all ? Oh, slow of heart that we 
are ! how long it takes us to find that love is no coin of 
earth, to be divided among so many and no more ; to be 
given in such and such shares, each great share 
diminishing the remainder ! Nay, but cannot that fire 
of heaven light a thousand hearts, and burn the brighter 
for all that it kindles ? There must always be an 
ingredient of evil, a selfward narrowing spirit, in every 
love which tends towards the absorption and ex- 
tinguishing of other pure affections. It is not Love, it 
is Selfishness, which asks our friend to love others less 
that he may love us more. The more we truly love one 
man, the more we are able to love another. And, above 
all, and in a double sense, the more we love our fellow- 
creatures, the more we are able and the more we are 
permitted to love Grod, As I have already shown, there 
is no one way by which we can so well prepare our 
hearts for Divine communion as by human affections, 



SELF- CONSECRATION. 



nor are there any souls so often visited by God's Spirit 
as those which " dwell in love " with His creatures. 

To fulfil, then, the great canon of Religious Duty 
it is not needful to sever or to loosen even the very 
tenderest of social ties. We are not called on to over- 
throw the sweet homes of our earthly affections, that so 
over the desolate ruins may be erected the solitary 
trophy of God's victory. Rather must we build upon 
their summits the heaven-soaring dome of piety, bind- 
ing and overhallowing the whole. 

Truly it is a pitiful notion, that which takes for 
granted the impossibility of our ever loving God, 
actually and affirmatively, any better than we com- 
monly do, and on the strength of this assumption 
teaches us that, if we desire to make His love paramount 
in our hearts, there is no resource open to us but forth- 
with to cut down every other love, so that at least it 
may stand alone. Surely there are two better lessons 
than this to be drawn from a true study of our nature. 
By learning to love man better shall we not learn how 
to love God better ? By learning to know God better 
shall we not at least kindle in these ice-cold hearts some 
degree of positive warmth towards Him, some senti- 
ment whose sole importance in our souls shall not be 
(like that of a dwindled shrub in a desert) derived only 
from the solitude in which it stands ? The notion that 
the supremacy of Divine Love is to be secured by the 
diminution, or even destruction, of human affections 
has tended to make the whole idea of self- consecration 

p 



314 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



one not only of self-sacrifice (that is, of the sacrifice 
of the unlawful desires of the lower self), but of 
universal sacrifice — the oblation of all that is in itself 
good in ourselves and those belonging to us, no less than 
of all that is evil. From this root of error have arisen 
the world-wide miseries of solitary asceticism — the 
delusions of the Fakir, the Dervish, the Stylite, the 
Hermit, and the Trappist, and the less obvious, but 
hardly less injurious, mistakes of the Protestant devotee, 
who tasks himself to chill the sweet affections in whose 
growth his spiritual life itself can alone find health and 
vigour. 

All such ideas of sacrifice as these necessarily involve 
the attribution to Grod of a character the most remote 
from His own. The egotism of the man who desires to 
narrow his friend's whole heart and mind to himself, 
the rapacious jealousy of a despot — these are the 
images of Deity inevitably erected in the mind which 
seeks to please Grod by the oblation of the natural 
affections and social ties of humanity. It cannot be 
too often repeated, the laws of our nature are God's 
laws. He has given us the noble light of intellect, and 
made all its rays converge into one pencil of light, 
pointing for ever to His Goodness and His Wisdom. 
He has given us the blessed power of love, and made it 
the ladder on whose angel-peopled steps we may climb 
up towards Himself, where He stands on its heavenly 
summit. To say that He requires us to quench that 
light that we may see Him more clearly, to break every 



SELF - CONSECRATION . 



315 



round of that ladder that we may ascend to Him more 
securely — is not this the extreme of all folly ? 

Self- consecration must be a different thing from this, 
if it be an act acceptable to the Creator of man's mind 
and heart. We can no more please Him by spoiling 
His work, and counteracting the ends for which He 
made it, than we can please a mechanician by shatter- 
ing his machine, a musician by untuning his instru- 
ment. To make our offering fit for God's altar we 
must make it "perfect after its kind " strong, fair, and 
spotless. It is a thoroughly human life God requires us 
to lead ; not the life of some Angel of our fancy, but of 
the Man or Woman God has designed each of us to be. 
Every limb of our God-made bodies, every faculty of 
our God-made minds, every affection of our God-made 
hearts, is to be used, developed, strengthened, purified, 
and then hallowed — hallowed in the use, not in the 
destruction. 

Assuming it as established that we ought to make 
God's love paramount in our hearts, how are we to 
accomplish it ? 

It will be unnecessary to do more than briefly indicate 
the mode in which the performance of all other duties 
assist in the preparation for, and fulfilment of, this 
one. 

Social duties assist it, as I have just asserted, by 
fitting our hearts, through human love, for the love 
Divine. 

v 2 



316 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



Personal duties assist it, by that purification and en- 
largement of our souls which, by rendering them more 
perfect, enables them continually to approach nearer to 
a perfect God.* 

Religious duties — such as direct worship and the 
cultivation of faith — assist it immediately, by developing 
the sentiments in which it takes rise. 

Finally, supposing all these to be fulfilled to the 
bounds of our powers, there yet remains the grand act 
of the soul, whereby it consciously and freely accepts its 
high destiny, and resolves to exert the whole energy of 
its will to fulfil it ; namely, " to approximate itself to 
God for ever." In that eternal approach to God and 
goodness, man sees before him, converging into one 
radiant focus of virtue and happiness, alike the behests 
of the holy law, the design of God in creation, and the 
aspirations of his own highest nature. The scope 
embraced by the resolution to dedicate existence to this 
glorious end involves a scheme of life I cannot attempt 
to indicate save in faintest outline. Not to the mere 
theorist, but to the happy soul which dwells therein, can 
it belong to paint in its hues of heaven that " Beulah " 
of the far-travelled pilgrim, whom Death's River itself 
scarce divides from the near City of God. 

This at least is clear : Religion would be the living 
heart of such a life. Not only would religious duties be 
performed and religious affections cultivated, but they 

* "Piety is preserved by temperance, and destroyed by sensual 
indulgence." — Proverb of the Kaliph All. 



SELF-COXSECRATION. 



317 



would become in genuine truth the central cares, the 
primary joys, of existence. Everything would be given 
up unreservedly and unhesitatingly, to further the great 
aim of union with God. The man would lay out the 
plan of his external life so as to the utmost of his 
abilities to aid the progress of the inner. Among the 
professions open to him, he would choose the one 
leading him farthest from worldliness and nearest to 
God. In making his friendships and connections, he 
would look to moral and religious qualifications before 
all other ; and this he would do, not by violent com- 
pulsion of his own affections (a violence which in such 
relations is false and immoral), but by the spontaneous 
sympathies which religious and moral affinities would 
produce in his heart. In minor matters, his pursuits 
and pleasures, and the hours appropriated to them, 
would be regulated with the same view to the reserva- 
tion of all his best delights. 

Secondly, the man's whole possessions, time, talents, 
worldly wealth, would be held by him as things whereby 
he could do God's work in the world. The relief of 
His creatures' sufferings, the contribution to their 
happiness, and, above all, the assistance to their piety 
and virtue — these would be his real heartfelt aims ; and, 
while fulfilling the duties nearest to his hand, he would 
be ever stretching out after fresh means of usefulness, 
In a word, his all of existence would be truly a gift 
to God. Made a Free Agent by the most marvellous 
act Omnipotence itself could perform, he is able thus 



318 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



to make himself a free gift ; to take, as it were, his 
whole life, mortal and immortal, and, without reser- 
vation of one unhallowed thought or feeling, dedicate 
it for ever to be a life in God and for God. 

Where have we now arrived? Is it not at that 
doctrine of Sacrifice which has pervaded all the reli- 
gions of the earth ? Is it not here where Religion and 
Morality culminate and unite — where Worship has led 
man's intuition in all ages, even to that mystery of self- 
oblation* which has found its types from the earliest 
holocaust of the mythic patriarchs to yesterday's Chris- 
tian Eucharist ? How deep the foundations of the idea 
of sacrifice must lie in human nature is proved by the 
enormity of the horrors to which its misdirected impulse 
has led. Let the Aztec's gory altars, the Phoenician's 
fiery shrines, the Hindoo's crushing cars, attest the 
might of the sentiment which has demanded such 
manifestation, f 

* The meaning of a sacrifice is said to differ from that of an oblation 
in that the oblation is merely given ; the sacrifice must be either trans- 
formed in some way or destroyed. It is by a transformation from sin 
to righteousness that the true sacrifice of the soul to God is accom- 
plished. 

t The forms, too, of the immolation ; the primary and ever-recurring 
tendency towards the choice of a human victim (of which, to the last, 
the animal seems only a substitute) ; the entire cremation of the body 
in the sacred purifying fire, or (still more emphatic symbol !) the ex- 
traction of the palpitating heart and its presentation to the god ; the 
freedom with which the animal led by a loose cord was induced to 
approach the altar, and wait unshacMed for its death-stroke ; the 
special approval of " blood drawn from the offerer's own body," in the 



SELF-CONSECRATION. 



319 



By whatever path, religious or moral, we advance, it 
appears that the doctrine of Sacrifice necessarily at a 
certain stage presents itself. Morality shows it as the 
consummation of human virtue, wherein the finite 
righteous Will of man freely sinks itself in the infinite 
righteous Will of God. Religion leads us to it through 
all her lessons : through gratitude she urges us to give 
back all to Him who has bestowed all on us ; through 
adoration, to assimilate our souls to the Perfect Spirit 
of God ; and, lastly, through devout prayer, to present 

frightful sacrifices to Devi, licensed in the Calica Purana — all these 
types point assuredly to the great idea which underlies all their 
hideous aberrations, the rightfulness that man should be given to God. 
True, this grand thought was doubtless blended with, and often over- 
laid by, notions gross and base as the depths of barbaric, and even 
cannibal anthropomorphism. Doubtless it was often to appease an 
infuriate deity, or to feed a ravenous one, that the pagan altars 
streamed with human gore, and the flesh of hecatombs of victims 
infected the air. Still, had these ideas been the primary ones, it is 
impossible that such forms would have been invented for the sacrifice 
as those just described, nor would human victims have been chosen by 
nations who (like the Druids) attributed no evil passions to their god, 
and never sunk to the rare degradation of cannibalism. The real 
difficulty in admitting this high meaning in sacrifice is the fact that 
the rite appears so early in all the religious developments of the race, 
whereas we should have expected it rather to mark a very advanced 
stage of progress. The phenomenon seems to be analogous to those 
half-abortive manifestations of pure Monotheism discernible almost 
before the dawn of Polytheism in the Yedas, Orphic Hymns, &c. 
These facts have given colour to the anti-historic notion of a pure 
primeval religion among the patriarchs of the whole human race. 
They should only show that through thickest darkness God permitted 
His light to shine on such souls as sought it earnestly. 



320 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



the offering of an absolutely contented Will. In Sacri- 
fice, the sacrifice of some vicious desire, must all virtue 
and religion commence. In Sacrifice, the entire and 
final sacrifice of soul and body, must all virtue and reli- 
gion culminate. When the true self of man stands out 
in the sunlight of full consciousness, and, assuming the 
sacred priesthood of a free intelligence, immolates on 
the altar of God his own lower nature — "the flesh, with 
its affections and lusts" — then the great mystery of 
religion is accomplished. There is nothing further 
needed ; no more atonement possible, since union itself 
has taken place. Only this action must be sustained 
throughout eternity, and magnified by each access of 
being in our ever-growing souls. 

It is, of course, in actual prayer that this deed of 
sacrifice is, as it were, concreted and embodied.* The 
Christian, when he commemorates the most perfect of 
such sacrifices ever made by man — the virtuous life and 
martyr-death of Christ — at the same time that he " pre- 
sents his own soul and body, the reasonable, holy, and 

* ' ' In these acts [of devotion] the mind must be free from injurious 
thoughts, full of compassion towards the poor, the blind, and even 
enemies, happy both in pain and pleasure. Addressing himself to the 
Deity, the worshipper must say, s Like myself there is not another 
sinner on earth, and like Thyself there is no Saviour. 0 God, 
seeing that this is the case, I wait Thy will. ' He must next present a 
bloody sacrifice, by slaying all his 2 )a ssio7is } as anger, covet ousness, 
intoxication, and envy. He must add, 1 All my works, good or evil, 
in the fire of Thy favour I present to Thee as a burnt -offering. ' " — 
Extract from the Veda, "Ward, ii, 98. 



SELF-CONSECRATION. 



321 



acceptable sacrifice/ 1 stands the connecting link between 
the bloody symbol of the slaughtered lamb and the 
spiritual idea of self-immolation.* TVith such material 
type^ or without it, the Jew and the Moslem, the Parsee, 
Buddhist, Brahmin, Druid, Greek — all have felt the 
same truth. Self-oblation is man's highest worship ; 
" Thy will be done " the central clause of the world's 
great prayer. 

But it is not in the one act alone such sacrifice is 

* ' ' There are, in truth, only two real sacrifices in the world's his- 
tory : the sacrifice of the historical Christ, offered through a life of 
holiest action and a death of purest love ; and the sacrifice of the 
Church, that is to say, of faithful humanity in the succession of gene- 
rations offering up itself in childlike thankfulness through life and 
death, and expressing this as the Christian vow in the act of common 
adoration" (Bimsen's Hippolytus, vol. iv. p. 91). "And the state of 
Christianity implieth nothing else but an entire absolute conformity to 
that spirit which Christ showed in the mysterious sacrifice of Himself 
upon the cross. We must not consider our blessed Lord as suffering 
in our stead, but as our representative. He suffered and was a sacrifice 
to make our sufferings and sacrifices fit to be received by God. All the 
doctrines, sacraments, and institutions of the Gospel are only so many 
explications of this great mystery" (TTiHiam Law, Serious Call, 
chap. xvii). I do not believe this is the ordinary acceptation of the 
meaning of the Eucharist ; at least it seems (so far as it is possible to 
understand the explanations offered to us on the subject) to be subor- 
dinated usually to the mystic "eating of the flesh of the Son of man." 
The following, however, is one of the latest expositions of the Sacra- 
mental theory : — " Life is [to the communicant] a continual sacrifice of 
that which dies and rises again, a reiterated life-long oblation of the 
renewed man, and partakes, as the means of its sustentation in this 
elevated condition, of peculiar effluxes of the Divine Nature, by feeding 
on a sacrifice" (Freeman's Principles of Divine Service, p. 199). 



322 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



accomplished. When the high inspiration of com- 
munion has passed away into the recesses of memory, 
when the tumultuous joy ceases to throb in the heart, 
and man is compelled to turn his gaze back from 
heaven to earth, and descend from the " Delectable 
Mountains " whence Paradise seemed so near, to tread, 
with downcast eyes and narrowed vision, the path of 
that duty he has chosen, it is then that the sacrifice 
becomes a reality ; then, when he no longer merely 
bows on the steps of Grod's altar, but when his heart 
lies on its marble surface bare and bleeding. "Who 
envies not Curtius leaping down the Forum's gulf while 
yet the sunlight glittered on his crest and the shout 
of Rome redeemed rung through the echoing abyss ? 
Who shudders not at his destiny when he lies mangled 
in the silent depths of the terror-haunted pit, waiting 
in his living grave the slow release of death ? 

We often forget these things when we think of Self- 
sacrifice. We forget that all the real trial lies before 
us, even when that grand resolve has stung our souls. 
There is the actual self-denial or suffering, commonly 
greater than we anticipated ; and there is, further, the 
natural decline and reaction from the fervid feelings in 
whose white heat the resolution was stricken out. The 
order of Providence seems to demand that we should 
thus choose the narrow way in the noontide of spiritual 
light, and be called to tread it when our sun lies hid 
beneath the horizon of immediate consciousness. It 
was not when God's angel-thoughts were around him, 



SELF-CONSECRATION. 



323 



and lie took freely his cup of agony from his Father's 
hand, that the Christ achieved his everlasting crown. 
It was when the death- darkness mounted slowly up the 
cross, till heart and brain grew dim, and God's face was 
hid, and the cry burst from his soul, " Why hast Thou 
forsaken me ?" 

And in other and lesser martyrdoms than that of 
Calvary it is equally true that the sacrifice lies in the 
slow completion of the self-abnegation, and not in the 
first oblation. When the exile for conscience' sake 
stands on the heaving deck, still beholding his loved 
ones waving their last farewell, and feeling their tears 
yet warm upon his cheek, his sacrifice is but prepared. 
When the long years of mind and heart solitude have 
stolen the vigour from his brain, and filled with sickly 
longings the void in his affections — when the weary life 
is drawing to a lonely close — then, if his soul be kneel- 
ing still, laying willingly still its great gift on the altar, 
then is his sacrifice truly made to God.* And thus, 
too, must be fulfilled all sacrifices — freely, cheerfully, 
to the end; for it is in the perseverance that lies the 
sacrifice. And herein, too, may lie its joy and glory ! 
Each moment that the soul resists the temptation to 
regret, and renews in spirit its vow of sacrifice as freely 
as at first, it actually accomplishes its act of virtue : it 
is marching forward in its path, and not merely, as it 

* " They are not Suttees who perish in the flames, 

0 Nanuk : Suttees are those who die of a broken heart." 
Ummer Das., in the Adee Grunfh (Sacred Book of the Sikhs). 



32 i RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 

sometimes seems, standing still on the barren rock 
whither a wave of resolution has borne it. 

And now to conclude. 

Perfect self-consecration to God would be a life of 
absolute virtue, absolute religion. It is not in a finite 
creature's power to accomplish this perfectly ; but it is 
so to resolve on doing it to the utmost of each day and 
hour's growing power. It remains only for each human 
heart to decide whether it will exert the grandest 
prerogative of its freedom, and give itself thus to 
God. 

I believe that a vast preponderance of the evil of the 
world results from the incompleteness of men's choice of 
virtue, far more than from their deliberate selection of 
the path of vice. Among minds not grossly depraved 
— not entangled in any special webs of passion or 
deception — it cannot, I think, be questioned that 
the ordinary condition of the Will is one of partial 
virtuous energy, accompanied by a more or less decided 
intention of becoming eventually altogether moral and 
religious. Here, however, the virtue stops. We say 
with St. Augustine, "Make me holy, but not yet." 
Reservations lie latent in the mind concerning some 
unhallowed sentiments or habits in the present, some 
possibly impending temptations in the future ; and thus 
do we cheat ourselves of inward and outward joys 
together. We give up many an indulgence for con- 
science' sake, but stop short at that point of entire 



SELF-CONSECRATION. 



325 



faithfulness wherein conscience could reward us. It is 
said that a man may walk unhurt through a furnace- 
chamber wherein, if he place one linib alone, it will be 
scorched to torture, Thus do we feel double pain in 
the sacrifices which are but partial, and in which our 
whole heart never enters, and whereby, therefore, it is 
never warmed. If we would but give ourselves wholly 
to God — give up, for the present and the future, every 
act, and, above all, every thought and every feeling, to 
be all purified to the uttermost, and rendered the best, 
noblest, holiest we can conceive — then would sacrifice 
bear with it a peace rendering itself, I truly believe, far 
easier than before. 

There is nothing unnatural in such idea of entire 
self-sacrifice. When we are asked to make it for God's 
sake we treat it as if it were an achievement of almost 
superhuman magnitude. But does not that human 
affection which it is almost profane to bring into com- 
petition with the love of God, does not the commonest 
conjugal attachment, lead thousands of men and women 
every year to forsake father and mother, home and 
country, wealth, ambition, friends — in a word, to make 
enormous sacrifices for a simple affection, too often 
undignified by any moral grandeur, and ever incapable 
of affording joys comparable to those of religious devo- 
tion ? Kay, human love often makes sacrifices which 
can never be demanded by religion. It can give up its 
own joys, the presence and even the love of its object, for 
his sake. But the farther we journey on the path of 



326 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



Divine sacrifice, the nearer we every day draw to Him 
for whom we make it : we are sure that He sees every 
pang, and that He will give us more and more of the 
sense of His love for every effort we make to de- 
serve it. 

So natural is the readiness of all love-sacrifice, that in 
youth, before selfish prudence and worldly wisdom have 
done their evil work in our hearts, there are few of us 
who have not pictured in our day-dreams, as the 
fondest of our aspirations, some scenes in which our 
affections shoidd at length find scope in acts of sublime 
self-devotion. We do not merely think, "In such 
circumstances I would die for my friend/' but actually, 
" I wish that such circumstances would arise that I 
might die so blessedly/' Myths of sacrifice spring up 
spontaneously as wild-flowers in every human heart, 
ere selfish interests have trodden them into the world's 
hard highway. And even at its hardest and worst, 
when all abstract declarations of love, Divine or human, 
fail to find echo or bring forth any response of feeling, 
the wondrous tale of that Sacrifice which has become 
the central one of human story, and received the 
radiance of the ideal — that tale, I say, will call out 
torrents from the rock, and waken into raptures of 
admiration soids which seem dead to every sentiment of 
generosity. Herein, in this one ideal of a love which 
sacrifices life for the salvation of the ungrateful and 
rebellious, lies the might of the Christian Churches, the 
golden sceptre of the whole line of spirit-kings, from 



SELF-CONSECRATION. 



327 



Paul to "Wesley. The purely human sympathy with 
the self-devotion pictured on Calvary has opened 
milli ons of hearts to sentiments leading to all the 
highest in our nature. And shall we talk, then, of the 
doctrine of self-sacrifice to God as if it were a super- 
human thing, an idea haying nothing in common with 
our poor narrow hearts ? 

Sacrifice is simply love in action — the universal and 
spontaneous language of the sentiment in its intensity. 
Let us but love God aright, and the willingness to offer 
ourselves, " soul and body" — the reasonable, holy, and 
acceptable " sacrifice " — must, according to the laws of 
our nature, arise in our hearts. Poorly, imperfectly, 
that offering is made ; but ever more and more it will 
continue to complete itself. And, at last, as the 
righteous "Will of man gains the final victory, as it 
unites itself in entire acquiescence with the all-righteous 
Will of God, Sacrifice will at once be perfected and 
abolished, immerged in one infinite ocean of joy and 
love. 

" God loves us all." We use such words till we 
forget their meaning. If we understood what they 
signify, self- consecration would seem the simplest of all 
things. But, in the endless oscillations of our thoughts 
between the low conception of a merely human God 
and the vague notion of the Pantheist's " World Spirit/' 
we ever pass over the central truth that in Him the 
personal love of humanity, and the universal, equal, 
boundless love of Deity, are one and the same. I have 



328 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



already spoken of the power which, even our hearts 
possess of loving indefinitely numerous living souls, 
each of which has its own individuality, and draws from 
us an individual affection never resembling any other. 
It is as if there were a separate side of our nature, a 
facet of the diamond, for each friend with whom we 
enter into communion — a side which that man or 
woman alone in the universe can illumine. The self- 
ish part of affection, indeed, is not divisible infinitely, 
but, like other base things, suffers diminution according 
to the sharers ; but pure Love is rich as spirit is rich. 
It is a lamp in a room hung round with mirrors, 
wherein it is interminably reflected, and every one of 
which serves to lighten more and more that bright 
chamber of a loving soul. The love of God must be 
like this, only wide even as His boundless creation, 
effulgent as the light. 

" The sun himself had seemed 
A speck of darkness there, 
Amid that Light of Light !" 

Men think sometimes, " God is infinite, therefore 
He cannot love as we do." But it is precisely because 
He is infinite that therefore every perfection of love — 
boundlessness of extent and intensity of degree — must 
of necessity belong to His love. It is attributing limits 
to His nature to suppose He cannot love infinitely, in 
our meaning of that holiest sentiment. It is attribut- 
ing limits to His nature to suppose He cannot thus love 



SELF-CONSECRATION. 



329 



infinitely every soul throughout the millions of the 
worlds. 

We can only love what is lovely now; but God's 
eternal nature loves the future saint in the sinner of to- 
day. He sees the special spiritual beauty, whose germ 
He has planted in each soul, blooming in His paradise 
millenniums hence, and to Him the murderer of earth is 
even now the philanthropist of heaven. It is not only 
all man's present and past weakness, meanness, sin, 
which lie unveiled before His awful eye. There is also 
in every one a spring of love, and purity, and goodness, 
whose growing course He sees swelling into the wide 
flood of resistless virtue, even as beneath His gaze the 
hidden fount of the Nile and the flowing seas of its full 
tide lie mapped as one great stream. 

Whatever we can imagine of love, that, and far more 
than that, God gives to each of us ; gives it as fully and 
absolutely as if no other spirit but His and our own 
existed in a desert universe together. We may love 
Him more because His mercy spreads over all the 
myriad millions of our brothers. He does not love us 
less because His infinite heart embraces every creature 
He has made. 

Such is our God — such our relation to Him. Is it 
not the most natural thing in the world that we should 
give to Him our grateful, joyful, adoring hearts, our 
existence in time and eternity ? What else do we want 
but love like His in which to live, and for whose sake 
to labour and suffer, to live or die, as to Him seems 

Q 



330 



RELIGIOUS OBLIGATIONS. 



best ? TTe are poor,, feeble creatures, full of longing 
desires. But, after all, is not this the want which lies 
at the very depth of our cravings ? 

The poorest love is a happy thing. The smallest 
self-denial for affection's sake is a pure pleasure. What 
would it be to lore absolutely a Being absolutely lovely 
— to be able to give our whole existence, every thought, 
every act, every desire, to that adored One — to know 
that He accepts it all, and loves us in return as God 
alone can love ? Sometimes, even in this life, that love 
of (rod breaks on the soul. The man kneels and offers 
up the full heart's vow of a life of love, Divine and 
human. He gazes around, and his tears make the halo 
of a glorified world. If he could not weep, his poor 
human heart would burst with its unfathomable joy ; 
for his spirit has blended with God, and it has been 
revealed to him what God is. 

This happiness grows for ever. The larger our 
natures become, the wider our scope of thought, the 
stronger our will, the more fervent our affections, so 
much the deeper must be the rapture of such God- 
granted prayer. Each sacrifice resolved on opens wider 
the gate: each sacrifice accomplished is a step towards 
the paradise within. Soon it will be no transitory 
glimpse — no rapture of a day — to be followed by clouds 
and coldness. Let us but labour, and pray, and wait, 
and the intervals of human frailty shall grow shorter 
and less dark, the davs of our delight in God longer and 
brighter, till at last life shall be nought but His love ; 



SELF-CONSECRATION. 



331 



our eyes shall never grow dim, His smile never turn 
away. 

O merciful Father, shall such things ever be ? 
Are they waiting for us now in Thine infinite heart ? 
Hast thou made us for Thy dear love ? and are we still 
the sinful beings who kneel before Thee now ? 



THE END. 



WILLIAM STEVENS, PBINTEE, 37, BELL TAED, TE1IPLE BA.B. 



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